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6 OCTOBER 2010
NO 1637
Who hurts?
The young people living in residential care settings are usually considered to be "problem children." Although this is not an objective statement, it undoubtedly reflects broad intersubjective agreement. The subjects who share in it — the "definers" and those who are thus defined — often include screening and placement agents and members of the youths’ communities and of neighboring communities as well as residential care experts. Sometimes members of the resident’s family and the resident himself concur with this definition as well. Young people are generally referred to residential settings because they were identified as "problematic" in their previous environment.
The "problems" of these youngsters are often, in fact, euphemisms for deviance from social norms in one, two, or all three of the following domains: In the cognitive domain, they are sometimes described as having considerably lower intellectual and scholastic ability than their peers. They may be perceived as physically different, disabled, sick, or limited. But it is mainly in the affective domain that they are seen as different — maladjusted, disturbed, disruptive, and sometimes delinquent and violent.
It seems to be very rare for youth who are not considered "problematic" to be referred to residential settings merely because they come from broken or poverty-stricken families. The fact of their being identified as deviant or "problematic" has special significance in the way they are perceived by their caretakers, the residential care workers, who do not usually question the validity of the considerations that led to the youths’ referral to the setting and often take them for granted. In the interviews, the residential care workers described their charges at great length, referring to their behavior, their prospects, and the reasons for their referral to the residential setting, dwelling on those who disrupt their work, disturb them, and hurt them.
MORDECAIARIELI
Arieli, M. (1997). Who hurts? Child and Youth Services, 18, 2. pp.33-34.
