The interplay of youth and care characteristics with a positive social climate in therapeutic residential youth care

Autor: Jonathan D. Leipoldt, Annemiek T. Harder, Nanna S. Kayed, Hans Grietens, Tormod Rimehaug
Přispěvatelé: Developmental and behavioural disorders in education and care: assessment and intervention, Clinical Child and Family Studies
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Children and Youth Services Review, 134:106348. PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
Children and Youth Services Review, 134:106348. Elsevier Ltd.
Children and Youth Services Review
ISSUE=16;TITLE=XVI International EUSARF Conference 2021: The Perspective of the Child
ISSN: 0190-7409
DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2021.106348
Popis: Background: Therapeutic Residential Youth Care (TRC) concerns the treatment and care of young people outside their family environment and aims to provide services to protect, care, and prepare young people for returning to life outside the institution. There is, however, limited evidence on how TRC achieves treatment goals: TRC remains too much a “black box”. More specifically, little is known about the association between contextual factors such as treatment organization, youth characteristics, and a positive social climate in TRC. One of the most basic elements necessary for treatment success is the interpersonal environment (hereafter named as social climate) that adolescents and staff members in TRC continuously are a part of. Insight into how organizational and adolescent factors interplay in predicting social climate can help TRCs to choose or tailor characteristics and strategies to their residents and to use this knowledge to guide how the TRCs can be improved to create more positive living environments. Objectives: The aim of this study is to investigate differences in TRC and youth characteristics and their association with a positive perceived social TRC climate by answering the following research questions: (1) How are TRC characteristics associated with perceived social climate in TRC? (2) How are adolescent characteristics associated with perceived social climate in TRC? (3) How do adolescent characteristics and TRC characteristics interact in their association with experienced social climate in TRC? Method: We applied a person-centered approach in a cross-sectional design with a sample of 400 adolescents and 142 staff leaders from Norwegian TRC. We analyzed youth and TRC characteristics in a latent class analysis and established groups. Thereafter, we performed a MANOVA to establish associations with social climate based on the identified TRC and youth groups in the data. Results: The two types of TRC settings we found, i.e., larger TRC settings and family-style TRC settings, show small differences in social climate. These settings only differed on youth activities and staff shifts type (more cohabitation and unorganized activities outside TRC in family-style TRC). We identified four adolescent classes: A severe problems group, youth with incidental problems, family problems, and a migrant background group. The migrant background group showed the most positive perceptions of social climate, followed by youth with incidental problems, family problems, and severe problems. The interplay of TRC and youth characteristics was significant for the perception of involvement, which was more positive for youth with family problems in family-style TRC compared to larger TRC settings. In addition, the perception of involvement was significantly more positive for youth with incidental problems in larger TRC settings compared to family-style TRC. Conclusions: TRC staff should acknowledge how social climate is connected to TRC characteristics and the heterogeneity of adolescents in care. As social climate is subjective and dynamic, a continuous dialogue about TRC social climate between staff and youth is recommended. During an intake, expectation management can already be performed before treatment starts, and this subsequently can increase positive and more realistic expectations. Future research should further investigate how associations between TRC, youth, and social climate characteristics are associated with treatment outcomes to increase our understanding of achieving positive outcomes in TRC.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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