Victims, Nuisances or Both? Changing Protective Services for Young People

Abstract

Working with young people presents some unique challenges for protective services programs. How well equipped are services to meet those challenges? The Burdekin Report on Youth Homelessness graphically illustrates the ways in which both protective services programs and the community at large are failing young people.One young person's experience of welfare authorities went like this… “they put you in refuges. That's their escape from the subject… But if you've really got a problem they're not (of) very much assistance.”Intervention in the lives of young people has been alternatively described as neglectful, unhelpful, or damaging and punitive.