Working with Young People: The Way Forward
| Published date | 01 March 1979 |
| Date | 01 March 1979 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455057902600102 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Working with Young People:
The Way Forward
DAVID WARD
(This article is an edited version of a paper presented to the Probation Service
National Conference organised at Lancaster University last September by the
Home Office. Since that time, the long-awaited green paper on youth custody
and supervision has been published by the Home Office, so the Probation
Service has to think carefully about its future role with young offenders.)
The medical model
IN Children: Handle With Care,’ Thorpe’and Paley pointed out that delin-
quent behaviour is usually explained in terms such as &dquo;difficulties of
personality&dquo; and &dquo;emotional disturbance.&dquo; Such expressions readily accord
with the popular psychoanalytic wisdom that adolescence is a period of
&dquo;normal psychopathology&dquo; and fit the medical model of deviance. Empha-
sising the special personal characteristics of individual delinquents, this
model spawns approaches couched in the vocabulary of sickness and
treatment. However, as Cohen states quite baldly,2 &dquo;the treatment model
lacks anything like a sound empirical basis in the demonstration that
delinquency can be accounted for by psychological differences; the results
of various traditional counselling and community treatment programmes
have been uniformly disappointing.&dquo;
In another paper,3 Thorpe highlights adult society’s ambivalence to-
wards its young people suggesting that &dquo;we are both proud and em-
barrassed&dquo; by them. To my mind this ambivalence, in combination with
the medical model has meant that methods used with people fall well
short of utilising their full active and creative potential.
Recent developments
.
Critics will no doubt at this point suggest that I am falsely assuming
that traditional casework continues -to reign supreme in probation prac-
tice. They will point to differential treatment, to the development of
Intermediate Treatment groups and groupwork with young adult offen-
ders, to family therapy and behaviour modification. Far from demonstrat-
ing a reorientation in approach, I would contend that these innovations
are open to the same criticism, in that behaviour modification represents
merely a change in treatment technique while the other approaches have
only widened the scope of &dquo;treatment&dquo; beyond the individual to the &dquo;dis-
turbed&dquo; peer group and family.
It might also be suggested that experiments like IMPACT,4 with its
&dquo;situational&dquo; emphasis and its prime aim of diverting focus away from the
office interview between the probation officer and the client mark a change
in direction to other areas of concern-work, family and leisure. How-
ever, the final paper on IMPACT, in reporting the lack of success of the
experiment, points out that radically new approaches were not developed
but only differences in degrees and emphasis from traditional methods
emerged, e.g. team working, group work, conjoint marital and family
therapy, accompanying clients in leisure time pursuits, arranging work,
liaison with other agencies.
2
Stylc , and content
.
At this point I would like to draw attention to two key themes in rela-
tion to practice, which I intend to follow through in his article-style and
content. I have implied that in both of these aspects of practice, current
methods are inadequate.
With traditional methods, style and content are not readily differen-
tiated. They merge in the focus on personality development through thera-
peutic relationships. However, this approach is deficient because in content
it fails to focus on important environmental issues relevant to a young-
ster’s offending. Information about such matters as work or school, hous-
ing conditions, leisure activities and opportunities, is generally regarded
merely as helpful background to the primary therapeutic task. In style the’
traditional approach is elitist and professionally distanced. The social
worker diagnoses problems on the basis of professional knowledge and
expertise and not even the in vogue concept of &dquo;contract&dquo; counter-
balances this approach.
_
As this approach inevitably undervalues the youngsters’ own perspec-
tives and relegates concrete issues to a secondary position, it seems to me
hardly surprising that probation officers and other professionals are finding
youngsters &dquo;hard to reach.&dquo; This comes over most patently in...
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