Young people negotiating and maintaining boundaries in youth work relationships: findings from an ethnographic study of youth clubs

ABSTRACT

‘Professional boundaries’ set limits on appropriate behaviours in the relationship between the service users and practitioners. The professional literature often assumes boundaries are maintained by the practitioners, occupational bodies, or organisational policy. However in youth work this is under-researched. An ethnographic study of four youth clubs in the North East of England into ethical practice revealed that young people were surprisingly adept at maintaining boundaries with the youth workers. These boundaries were negotiated and maintained through the young people's use of space, their willingness to interact with the workers, the way they shared information with the workers, and their inclusion of youth workers into their social networking. Young people also showed a sophisticated awareness of the organisational boundaries youth workers were operating within, and often cooperated in maintaining them with the worker. The article concludes by arguing youth workers should take seriously young people's ability and willingness to set and work within boundaries, and see their negotiation and maintenance as a mutual endeavour. However, this may provide a challenge to organisations with rigid policy-defined boundaries.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth work
• professional boundaries
• negotiation
• ethnography

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully thanks the advice of Prof. Sarah Banks and Dr Andrew Orton.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an ESRC scholarship.