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Drawing on the findings from a longitudinal study of vulnerable young people's transitions to adulthood, this paper explores the ideas of shame and recognition. The young people, aged between 12 and 17 years at the first interview, had experienced chronic exposure to adversity from an early age (abuse, violence, mental health issues, addictions, and expulsion from school). They were clients of statutory and non‐governmental services: child welfare, juvenile justice, remedial education, and mental health services. This paper draws on the qualitative phase of the study (n = 107); young people and a trusted other, nominated by the young person, participated in three annual qualitative interviews. Interviews focused on young people's experiences of services, key transitions, their relationships, and the strategies they used to locate support and resources. Experiences of shame, misrecognition, and seeking recognition emerged as dominant themes in the young people's accounts, and these are explored in this paper. The paper concludes with a discussion on responsive social work interventions that generate a deeper understanding of young people's experiences of shame and misrecognition. Central to this practice are critical and relational social work practices that actively support young people to achieve recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the challenge reported in the research literature of providing adequate accounts of service quality and value to multiple stakeholders. Rather than starting with a particular accountability practice, we examine the accounts of complex service delivery and results from the perspective of five key stakeholder groups. The case study at the empirical centre of this research is a small New Zealand non-profit organisation that provides community-based wraparound casework to young people, and their families, with multiple and complex needs. This paper reports on data collected during 2009-2012 through interviews with five key stakeholders of this service: the young people, the caseworkers, the co-providers, the managers and the funders. Drawing on translation theory, the different points of reference and the consequential shifts in focus, content and meaning within the multiple stakeholder accounts are traced. The findings show that while each stakeholder group brings a unique point of reference to the service delivery, there are degrees of overlap in the focus and content of the accounts. This is particularly evident in the 'relationship' dimension. While overlaps may exist, points of invisibility are also revealed. Accountability tensions can be traced directly to these points of invisibility. As a result of this analysis, it is argued that more explicit attention to the impact of multiple stakeholders at the level of epistemology provides a mechanism for addressing some of the tensions routinely raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the concepts underpinning the reasoning processes of social worker's decision‐making provides important insights into how social work practice is undertaken. This paper examines one of the major discourses used by social workers in decision reasoning in a non‐governmental organization child protection context in Aotearoa/New Zealand: family maintenance. This study found that family maintenance as a concept was strongly privileged by social workers. This resulted in attempts to preserve families and created a hierarchy of preferred decision outcomes. A preference for family maintenance was supported by legal, moral, psychological and Māori cultural concepts. This pattern of constructs underpinned the ‘weighing up of harms’ when considering removal, and generally reflected a child welfare orientation. In addition to this, it was found that ‘family’ was broadly defined, and could include people who had a relationship with the children, or Māori definitions of extended family, in addition to legal ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the qualitative phase of a New Zealand study of young people who had been exposed to "risky" environments from a young age. These young people had experienced traumatic events such as abuse, violence, addictions, mental health issues, and many had been excluded from school. The young people (aged between 13 and 17) were users of multiple services (statutory and nongovernmental services including: child welfare, juvenile justice, remedial education, and mental health services). Qualitative interviews (n = 109) explored young people's experiences in their families, communities, education, and their perspectives on support provided by services and their own support networks. Three thematic clusters emerged as central motifs in young people's experiences and are the focus of this article: navigating "risky" environments; services and support; and, working to find different pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the findings of the qualitative phase of a New Zealand longitudinal study on vulnerable young people’s transitions to adulthood. The young people were aged between 12 and 17 years at the time of the first interview. The paper focuses on one key finding, how youth enact agency through their relationships with significant others: families, social workers, teachers and care workers. These youth had experienced sustained exposure to harm including abuse, violence, addictions, disengagement from school and mental health issues. The qualitative interviews focused on young people’s experiences with services (child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and education support services) their key transitions, and the strategies they used to locate support and resources. The thematic analysis of the interviews indicated that a search for agency was a central motif in young people’s experiences. This was reflected in three thematic clusters: making sense of the world, having a voice and acting on the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports part of a larger exploratory research study of social workers' preferred models of critical incident stress management and experiences of critical incident stress debriefing. Social workers were invited to contribute to the research through an advertisement in the national association's newsletter for Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers. Using a qualitative methodology involving in-depth interviews with 13 social workers, participants were asked about their experiences of critical events encountered within their workplaces over the last five years. Interviews were recorded by audiotape with consent and analysed using thematic analysis. Four main themes emerged: the importance of preparation for critical incidents, the role of relationship between line managers and social workers, specifically the line manager's support immediately after the critical incident, and the availability of peer/colleague networks. An unexpected finding was that social workers interviewed noted that the pre-existing relationship with the line manager influenced their experience of the debriefing process itself. The more engaged and emotionally aware the manager was seen, the more the social worker claimed the debriefing process had been successful from their perspectives. The implications for social workers and their employing agencies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the inner workings of the supervision session through the descriptions provided by supervisees and supervisors of their sessions. The aims of this paper are: (1) to explore the supervision session from both sides of the interaction; (2) to propose an interactional map of the supervision session; and (3) to provide supervisors with a practical checklist for the interactional process of the session. Thirty-four participants were interviewed regarding their experience of a recent supervision session and their experiences of sessions generally. These experiences were thematically analysed. Results show that supervisees and supervisors proceed through particular stages and phases in their supervision sessions and there is a ritual to the session. The session process mirrored the social work interview and involved discussion and problem-solving. Variations to the process were made to accommodate individual and cultural differences. The implications of the results are: (1) an interactional map of the stages and phases of the supervision session; (2) practical guidance for supervisees and supervisors on navigating their way through sessions; and (3) a working framework through which supervisees and supervisors can evaluate their sessions. The article concludes with a practical checklist for supervisors to use within their sessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]