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Norbert Herriger:
Empowerment in Social Work with 'Youth at Risk'

Vortrag im Rahmen der Conference of the International Association of Schools of Social Work - Montpellier, France 16.07.2002 (Parallel sessions 3 — TU-PS-03): "Empowering marginalised populations to reclaim their voices"
(veröffentlicht in: International Association of School of Social Work. Proceedings of the 30th bi-annual congress of the IASSW, Montpellier 15.-18.7. 2002. Internet-Adresse: www.aforts.com/colloques_ouvrages/colloques/actes/rech_auteur_ang.htm)

Introduction

In recent years empowermenthas become a comprehensive program in social work that encourages young people to discover their own strengths and to enhance self-determination and autonomy. The aim of empowerment-programs in social work is to strengthen young people's abilities to organize and direct their own lives, and to provide resources for self-determination and independence.

The empowerment concept starts out from a distinctly critical evaluation of traditional social work with 'youth at risk' (young, aggressive and frequent offenders). These traditional concepts of social work nurture a vision of young people that focusses on deficiencies and weaknesses — the identity of young offenders, their biographical experiences and social networks have been perceived exclusively in terms of defects, shortcomings, and immaturity. The empowerment concept offers a different perspective: Even in times of stress and strain young people are perceived as active agents that do have the power and the competence to shape and determine their own lives. This faith in people's strengths to successfully deal with pressures in a productive and socially acceptable manner is the central idea of the "strength's model" that guidelines empowerment social practice.

Elements of the strength's model in social work:

• have faith in the abilities of young people to decide their own destiny and to manage stressful social situations (personal power; self-management);
• acknowledge the right of young people "to be different" and to live a life outside of the mainstream of 'normality';
• refrain from moral judgements and cooperate with young people in a very intensive way to 'co-produce' concepts and perspectives of life that to them seem attractive and attainable ('biographical dialogue'; life history work);
• arrange flexible everyday assistence programs and provide perspectives in education, labor market and network integration (case management; widening opportunity structures);
• provide access to civil rights and social participation.

Empowerment in Social Work with Juvenile Delinquents

The empowerment concept clearly differs from the traditional model of "re-socialization", which has been the basic paradigm of social work with juvenile delinquents for a long time. Essentially, this resocialization model expresses the conviction that the delinquent behavior of youth has its roots in profound (family) socialization disorders. This conviction goes hand in hand with another: namely, that the delinquent behavior of young people urgently requires educational counter-measures. They are nonconformist and they violate rules — and this behavior indicates a desperate need for education and corrective social intervention. Thus, the resocialization model justifies radical and strict intervention in young people's lives (an intervention that by young people often is experienced as far too repressive and, therefore, is rejected). The empowerment concept gives us a different view of things: The deviant behavior is no longer derived from a history of socialization deficiencies alone. Rather, this deviant behavior is regarded as a subjectively meaningful and very explicit way to manage difficult situations in present life. Educational attempts at resocialization that only focus on the personal histories and past developments of adolescents are not likely to succeed. Wherever the empowerment concept replaces them, future-oriented educational methods prevail, linked to the concrete reality of their lives and designed to manage stressful life events and situations. In this manner, young people's abilities to take action, their self-esteem and self-confidence are renewed. Hence, the aim of empowerment practice in social work with young offenders is firstly to reduce the experience of helplessness and to reinforce self-esteem, coherence patterns and hardiness, and secondly to build up supportive social structures that offer young people new resources for successfully manage stressful social settings. In this regard, the empowerment concept in social work with 'youth at risk' encompasses four modules:

1 Focussing on young people's strengths
The basic conviction that governs the empowerment concept is the trust in the abilities and productive strengths of each and every individual. Young people know how to engineer their biographies constructively, even if, in past and present, incriminating facts have cast their shadow. In most cases, even with frequent offenders, delinquent behavior is only temporary. It is part of the adolescent phase of life and does not necessarily lead to deviant behavior in adulthood. Non-conformist attitudes and behaviors are a typical adolescent way of experimenting with life options, but at the treshold of adulthood (when young people leave their peer groups, find steady partners and make professional choices), these attitudes and behaviors return to normal, and rules are once again complied with (process of "maturing out"). However, there is a group of "high intensity offenders" particulary at risk who, while constituting only 5% of registered juvenile offenders, are responsable for about 30% of registered crimes: But even in these cases, repression and juvenile justice procedures still should not be chosen as a method either. What is needed, instead, is intensive "one-to-one guiding programs", that for these youth open new opportunities in education, work and peer relationships; and that at the same time provide professional partners who are available for discussing future plans.

2 Arranging everyday assistence programs (case management)
The value of social work is only apparent to juvenile offenders if they can experience it as "useful" in a very direct sense, i.e. if tangible help is given in stressful life situations and flexible forms of support are offered. "Case management"or "resource management", therefore, always stands at the beginning of any empowerment activity ("the arrangement of supportive resources"). The concrete forms of resource management are likely to be different from case to case: helping to structure everyday life (e.g. sheltered rooms for drug users; day care centers for street children; emergency flats and drop-in locations for adolescents in critical life phases); offering flexible forms of housing with little supervision; building up work programs — the list of 'good practice' programs in Germany that put new resources at the disposal of young people is long and encouraging.

3 The biographical dialogue (life history work)
Many young people are completely out of touch with their own life stories. The painful experience of broken-off relations, family violence, insults and the feeling of helplessness — all these factors induce young people to split off their personal histories. The biographical dialogue therefore is a methological instrument that helps to re-tie those biographical strings that have been snapped. The biographical discource has three objectives: (1) a retrospective orientation to reappraise the adolescent's life up to now, the history of his relationships, and his positive endeavours to gain control; (2) a future orientation in trying to achieve an understanding about personal goals and perspectives; and (3) imparting specific skills (skill building programs) that will help the adolescent to withstand provocations and conflict situations.

4 Creating new opportunities for participation
The empowerment concept looks at individual development from the perspective of participation. The development of children and adolescents can be conceived as a process of participation in an increasing number of social contexts. Young people are, from the moment they are born, active participants in social transactions. They learn to participate in complex and sometimes conflicting systems of social environment. The social context in which young people participate starts at the microlevel of the family and kinship, expands to peer groups and peer culture, school environment, neighborhood and youth culture, to the labor market and the public cultural system and — in the age of the "world wide web" — even to the 'global village'. Participation implies a mutual influence between individual and social systems in which both – the individual and the system – change.

If these complex processes of learning to participate succeed, young people develop a sense of competence and self-efficacy, connectedness and respect, belonging and responsibility. On the other hand: If these processes of participation and integration in larger social networks fail, the individual is at risk of marginalisation. Most expressions of juvenile delinquency can be seen as a manifestation of a process of marginalisation. A lack of connectedness and belonging, a feeling of alienation and disrespect is a fertile soil for egocentric and ruthless behavior. Empowerment can thus be seen as an activity directed at creating new opportunities for participation in social programs and networks on a community level. To conclude, I would like to describe three different empowerment programs:

"Wrap-around-Programs" ("Intensive Sozialpädagogische Einzelhilfe")
In this type of program an interdisciplinary team from different agencies, including the youth and his parents, developes a comprehensive service plan. In this plan a network of services, but also informal peer support is created around the client. Services are individualised and coordinated. The result is a package of services, guidance, and supervision. This package is flexible and subject to regular evaluation and adjustment. Usually there is a professional case manager that guards the process and organizes interagency collaboration.

Intensive Family Preservation ("Sozialpädagogische Familienhilfe")
Intensive Family Preservation is directed to families with children that (because of their criminal record) are imminent for out-of-home placement. These family support programs follow an ecological perspective: A family preservationist is assigned to the family and works within the family for a limited amount of time, reconstructing family roles and relationships. The program is guided by the brief therapy principles of the DeShazer Milwaukee Brief Family Therapy Program. The method is time-intensive (within a given time framework), goal directed and leans on social learning theory. Cooperation is sought with schools, neighborhood, employers and other key members of the community.

Intensive Probation Supervision ("Intensive Bewährungshilfe")
In Intensive Probation Supervision, juvenile delinquents have frequent (in most cases daily) contacts with their probation officer. Nevertheless, the focus of these juvenile justice programs is not on control and supervision, but on resource and skill building. The probation officer tries to arrange appropriate services and support networks for his client ("networking"), while at the same time monitoring intensively his behavior.

All these programs detailed above follow the principle of high intensity interaction. They do not focus on control but on strengths, resource building and networking. And, as a common factor, they are guided by respect for the client, his personal history and future perspectives.

Conclusion

To reclaim marginalised youth for nondestructive participation in social networks is not an easy task. A "joint venture" of helping youth at risk deal with everyday stresses and hassles is necessary. We do need empowerment programs that work with high intensity and very close to juvenile offenders, their families, peers, schools, neighborhoods and jobs. It is probably an illusion that marginalisation — rooted in frozen structures of social injustice and developed within years of personal history — can be changed into productive participation and network integration within a couple of months. Our efforts to reclaim youth at risk demand respect, time and patience. Only by this investment it will be possible to develop the strenths and resources of those adolescents that in current social policy are considered to be 'without any future'.