Conditional openness: young people define practices for successful child protection interventions

Abstract

Taking the reforms of child protection legislation that have occurred since the 1980s as a backdrop, this paper considers young people’s perspectives on the factors that facilitated their engagement with child protection services and the barriers they perceived to effective service delivery. Drawing on findings from a New Zealand study of young people’s experience of multiple service use (child protection, mental health, youth justice and remedial education), the paper identifies that that rather than being ‘resistant’ or ‘hostile’ to statutory child protection intervention, young people reported a ‘conditional openness’. This conditional openness was characterised by three themes: communication; continuity and consistency; and contextual and cultural responsiveness. Interventions with these characteristics activated this conditional openness allowing effective interventions to occur. Using a series of case studies, comprising interviews and agency case file records; the paper considers the experiences of 109 young people (12–17 years) as well as those of the ‘person most knowledgeable;’ an adult nominated by young people because they knew the young person’s situation well.

Keywords:

• Young people
• service use
• child protection
• relational practice

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank all the young people who contributed so generously to this research. They also thank the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for funding and supporting this study. They also acknowledge The Donald Beasley Institute, the Victoria University Research Trust, Youthline Auckland, Kapiti Youth Support and all the other researchers who assisted with the project. Finally they thank Debbie Sturmfels at the Office of the Chief Social Worker, Child Youth and Family for insightful and helpful comments and providing an early peer review of this paper when it was in draft form.

Notes

1. Māori are the indigenous population in New Zealand.

2. Extended family, family group, the primary economic unit of traditional Māori society. In the modern context the term is sometimes used to include friends who may not have any kinship ties to other members The Act also refers to hapû and iwi – larger tribally-based groupings as part of the decision-making process. maoridictionary.co.nz.

3. A FGC is a mediated formal meeting between family members and other officials such as social workers and police in regards to the care and protection or criminal offending of a child or adolescent.

4. A detailed description of the methodology can be found at www.youthsay.co.nz.

5. A detailed description of the study population can be found at www.youthsay.co.nz.