Access to young people through gatekeepers

My early research indicated that variation in funding pathways, ethos and what particular organisations sought to achieve (‘outcomes’) differed across children’s services, which seemed to influence the interventions received. I wanted to

incorporate this dynamic into the study, so young people were accessed through a range of agencies operating in the case study city, all of which were involved in

supporting vulnerable young people. Some were more ‘supportive’ services and some could be considered to have been more ‘disciplinary’ in orientation. The range was not intended to be comprehensive, but to provide good general

coverage of a variety of agencies. Spreading the workload across different services also helped to make the fieldwork feasible in a year (2010/2011) when many services were experiencing substantial funding cuts and more limited resources. In total, six projects acted as gatekeepers; five from the voluntary sector and one private sector provider. Examples of gatekeepers’ client groups included ‘young carers’, young people using drugs/alcohol, sexually exploited young people, those who were excluded or underachieving, children/young people living in emergency accommodation, young ‘runaways’, and refugee or asylum-seeking children/young people.

Access through gatekeepers has well-documented benefits and disadvantages when working with ‘vulnerable’ groups (Emmel et al, 2007; Miller and Bell, 2002;

Lee, 1993). In the present study, working through gatekeepers was central to answering the research questions, and therefore formed a key part of the research strategy. A core element of the study was to investigate which young people were identified as ‘vulnerable’, and working through gatekeepers was one way of generating information about such classifications. There were also substantial ethical advantages. Had I selected young people who were not receiving support from agencies, risk of them being affected negatively by interviews may have been increased as it would not have been possible to implement post-interview support were this required. Working through access projects also reduced risk to my personal safety, linking me with a professional body and enforcing mutually

protective boundaries between researcher and participant. In many cases, agencies provided a safe location from which to conduct interviews, and information to help me assess and manage risks.

Accessing young people through agencies also had major advantages in terms of generating ‘richer’ data. Working through gatekeepers is recognised as a way of increasing levels of trust between researcher and participants (Emmel et al, 2007).

To capitalise on this, I encouraged staff to be present for initial introductions to the

interviewees. However, there were two main disadvantages to working in this way with gatekeepers. Firstly, young people may have felt more inhibited disclosing negative views of gatekeepers. I tried to deal with this during the opening section of the interview, explaining confidentiality carefully. More significant though was that my strategy left me heavily reliant on those agencies having sufficient resources and motivation to support the study. Despite the dedication of a number of key individuals, at a time of welfare cuts the pace of interview recruitment was significantly slower than I had hoped.

The methods I used to engage with young people needed to be appropriate and workable within the context of the interventions each gatekeeper provided, so the recruitment process varied according to the agency I was working with. I usually approached a contact within the organisation whom I knew from previous work, or who was recommended via another contact. I would then send them a basic information sheet about the project (not included in Appendices for reasons of space) along with an information sheet for young people (Appendix A). Where services indicated they could recruit larger numbers of young people, I offered to write a brief report outlining young people’s feedback on their particular service in return, as an incentive for recruiting interviewees. After initial contact, I usually attended a team meeting or a meeting with my named contact, which helped clarify what would be expected if the organisation agreed to take part. These meetings also provided a forum for discussion of concerns or questions workers had (such as confidentiality arrangements, interview procedures and rewards), and also gave staff a clear idea of what the project was about and what interviews with young people would be like. I hoped this would mean that information about the study would be relayed more clearly and accurately to young people. The meetings also gave me the opportunity to demonstrate to staff that I was sensitised to issues related to working with ‘vulnerable’ groups of young people.

Recruitment of young people was often carried out via support workers talking to young people on a one-to-one basis, after an informal discussion with me about the young person they had in mind and why they thought they were suitable. Informal discussions about whether or not a young person was ‘suitable’ represented a joint

effort on behalf of the support worker and the researcher to ‘protect’ participants and work together to assess if their participation would be a positive experience for them. Staff tended to put forward potential participants in terms of their level of

‘vulnerability’, but also their ability to cope effectively with an interview situation.

Inevitably, this shaped the sampling process to some degree in that practitioners were consulted in the recruitment process. However, as I kept a note of them in my fieldwork diary, these conversations about ‘suitability’ also offered useful insights into how practitioners viewed vulnerability. In a small number of instances, I recruited participants more directly, speaking to them informally about the study during drop-ins, gym sessions, or educational settings, and arranging future appointments for interviews.

Throughout recruitment, the opportunity to participate was framed in terms of interviews being a chance for young people to get their ‘voices’ heard and to help shape services for other young people, placing value on young people as ‘experts’ in this arena. When I spoke to young people directly, I would take care to stress what the interview process would be like, giving practical examples of the questions and areas that would be covered. I also emphasised that the interview would be

relatively ‘in-depth’ and would last for around an hour, so that young people would be prepared for the experience of being asked to reflect in some detail on their lives and views. Rewards are discussed below, but these were never the main emphasis in recruitment.