Effect of developmental issues on risk

In considering the roles and responsibility of the professionals it is necessary to understand what factors are important to focus on in reducing and managing the risk of adolescents who display harmful sexual behaviour. In order to explore this issue during interview the young people and professionals were asked to consider what they believed were the key factors that helped manage risk. The professionals and young people were given a list of seven options; these were understanding the harmful sexual behaviour; understanding childhood; the home area that the young person was in; the current behaviour the young person was displaying; the

107 understanding harmful behaviour 24% understanding childhood 20% home area 8% behaviour 9% relationships 25% engagement with service 9% future goals 5%

relationships the young people had with others; the engagement the young people had with services and whether the young people had future goals.

In considering the responses provided by the young people interviewed, they were asked to rank the 7 areas in order. These were then given a score with the most weight receiving a score of 7 and the lowest rate giving a rating of 1. Where the young person was not able or did not wish to rank all seven then the remaining options were given a score of zero. These scores were then added together and the total scores were converted into a percentage. It can be seen in Fig. 22 that the young people interviewed believed that having relationships were the most significant factor in managing their risk, this was closely followed by having an understanding of their harmful behaviour and their childhood experiences. Interestingly engagement with services, the home area and having future goals were not rated as particularly significant by the young people.

Figure 22- What Young People thought helped manage risk

But how does this compare to the views of professionals? They were asked to rate the same seven options; understanding harmful behaviour; understanding childhood; the young people’s home area; their current behaviour; their relationships; their engagement with services and their future goals. The answers were ranked in the same way as for the young people. Fig. 23 shows the results of the professional’s interviews.

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Figure 23- What professionals thought helped young people manage their risk

It is interesting that whilst there are some similarities in the rating of these key areas there are some key differences. Both young people and professionals believed that harmful sexual behaviour was important. However, for the young people this came after relationships, relationships for professionals was ranked third most significant, closely followed by having future goals, something that the young people ranked least important. What this suggests is not that having future goals is unimportant for managing risk but that for the young people the need for social relationships was believed to be more significant, echoing Altschuler & Brash (2004) research. This is quite crucial when thinking about what areas of work to focus on in relation to assessment and risk management. Importantly, the three highest rated factors were the same for both professionals and young people, these being: understanding sexual behaviour, relationships and understanding childhood. These areas have clear links to understanding child development and harmful sexual behaviour in young people, areas where the training is lacking for professionals that work with adults.

The next question raised was whether there was any difference in the way the different professions ranked these seven options. The following graphs show the different professions ratings, see Fig. 24. What is interesting in analysing the percentages each profession ranked the seven elements is that three elements were consistently rated by all of the professions, this being the importance of understanding harmful sexual behaviour as being most important, that the home area was considered the least significant in managing risk and that having future goals was considered to be of medium importance for all professions.

understanding harmful behaviour 24% understanding childhood 17% home area 5% behaviour 11% relationships 16% engagement with service 12% future goals 15%

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Figure 24- Different professions view on what helps young people manage risk

In looking at the remaining factors there appeared to be a degree of difference between professions; surprisingly understanding childhood was ranked more significant by the Social Workers, Police Officers and Probation Officers and not by the YOT and Clinical workers who it would be expected to have given this more weight given the training they had received in relation to child development. Another difference was that, when considering present behaviour, the Police and Social Care did not rank this as particularly significant. This was surprising particularly given that the primary role of the Police is on ensuring people behave in law abiding ways and their focus is predominantly on current behaviour. Unsurprisingly, the Clinical professionals viewed relationships as being crucial given the focus of their training on child development and knowledge of the importance of developing peer relationships within adolescence. The issue of engagement with services provided some of the most inconsistent results with a range from 9 to 18, with all professions viewing it as being of medium importance. It is important to understand what professionals and young people view as significant in managing risk, particularly if there are differences in what the focuses are.

Understand Harmful behaviour

Understand

childhood Home area Behaviour Relationship

Engagement

with Services Future goals

YOT 23 14 6 12 16 14 15 Probation 28 19 6 12 11 9 15 Police 25 21 4 7 11 18 14 Social Work 25 21 4 7 11 18 14 Clinical 22 12 5 15 20 11 15 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 pe rce nt age

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