The Power of Relationship: A study of key working as an intervention with traumatised young people

Abstract

This paper explores the role of the key working relationship in helping traumatised and characteristically hard-to-reach young people. A grounded theory approach was used to analyse data from 18 semi-structured interviews carried out with both key workers and young users in a community-based, innovative project in Inner London, Kids Company. The following four codes emerged: titrating intimacy, the power of relationship, the therapeutic function of hope and ‘knowing your own ghosts’. As well as supporting the important therapeutic function of the key working relationship, this paper draws on the analysis of the data to outline a three-phase model of intervention (fostering place attachment–homeostatic attunement–disruptive attunement) when working with traumatised and often hard-to-reach young people.

Keywords:

• key worker
• therapeutic relationship
• trauma
• adolescence
• adolescent mental health problems

Notes

¹ An additional category, ‘Knowing your own ghosts’, emerged from the interviews with staff only. This relates specifically to the staff's repeated acknowledgment that their work requires an engagement in a process of self-exploration and understanding. This will not be explored in this paper.

² A more detailed report of the study can be obtained from the author.

³ Through his observations of mothers and fathers at play with their toddlers, Herzog noted that mothers usually join in with the toddler in his or her ongoing play thus giving the child a ‘continuity of being’ (Winnicott, 1965), validity and harmony with the environment, hence his term ‘homeostatic attunement’. Fathers, by contrast, characteristically disrupt the playing toddler's equilibrium by cajoling him into joining them in a new activity, that is, they display what he terms a ‘disruptive attunement’.