Research: Identifying 'Artistry' in Therapeutic Residential Workers - Fact or Fiction?

Doctoral research: Identifying Artistry in Child & Youth Residential Workers: Fact or fiction? Objective: To understand the types of knowledge; 'artistry' and/or characteristics residential workers with high risk adolescents... [ view full abstract ]

Doctoral research: Identifying Artistry in Child & Youth Residential Workers: Fact or fiction?
Objective:
To understand the types of knowledge; 'artistry' and/or characteristics residential workers with high risk adolescents 'bring' to the field when they start.

Purpose:
To clearly articulate a theoretical model or framework to enable the identification of the 'right people' for the work of therapeutic residential care to provide consistent and stable care to young people - prioritising relationships with a significant and trusted adult.

This will
• correctly inform and target workforce promotion,
• have implications for recruitment,
• reduce both Work cover and sickness costs and;
• reduce the loss of trained and valued workers due to their inability to cope with the work, which will increase the safety, stability and consistency of care for children and young people.

To understand, celebrate and represent the richness; ‘artistry’, characteristics, values and ‘types of knowledge’ residential workers ‘bring with them’ to the field whilst doing justice to the life stories people have shared with me about where we all came from, who we are and how we ‘came to be’. This ongoing tension greatly emphasises the importance of recruiting the ‘right’ people to work with our most vulnerable children and young people.

Research Questions:
What are the characteristics (types of knowledge) residential youth workers with high-risk children and young people bring to the field of residential work?

• What are the characteristics, ethics and values that make a ‘good enough’ (Sharpe 2006) residential child and youth care worker?
• Are the multiplicities of theories demonstrated by residential youth workers in managing complex, crisis situations largely unconscious, due to life experience, intuition, spirituality or their lifelong learning?
• Is formal education / training the most effective way of informing conscious practice in residential youth workers; Can some competencies including ethics and values in residential care with high risk young people only be mentored?
• Can we prove that a balance of formal training; pedagogy and life education contributes to equipping workers to provide aspirational residential care to young people who exhibit complex, pain based behaviour?

Method
Mixed narrative inquiry (15 interviews) within a constructivist / interpretivist paradigm is utilised within a bricolage framework using the metaphor of ‘quilting’ as a framework for meaning making.
The Constant Comparative Method together with the creative analysis frameworks of the Listening Guide, and Crystallisation are utilised to ensure validity as well as to respect, understand and journey together with these fifteen workers and their life stories from an insider researcher’s perspective utilising and celebrating a strong practice framework.

Results & Conclusions
At the time of writing this research is in the final stages of analysis with some incredibly interesting findings answering the above questions, clearly articulating who chooses to undertake this incredibly difficult work and why; their values; spirituality, characteristics; their education and training and the history or life journeys and familial and community influences that led to their incredible commitment and 'artistry'.

Jeannie Jones: one of the interviewees will also be part of the presentation; Jeannie has just published a book on her journey and learning from girlhood – The Daisy Chain