Modelos de Justicia Restaurativa

When asked about which young people they considered were vulnerable,

informants drew upon particular groups as illustrative examples. Table 5.2 shows the distribution of the examples of groups of young people who were referred to as

‘vulnerable’.

Table 5.2: Vulnerable groups of young people cited by key informants

Vulnerable group or circumstances given as example Number of informants

‘Sexually exploited’ young women³¹ 9

Parental abuse/neglect/poor parenting 7

Drug and alcohol use* 6

Homeless/poorly housed 6

Offending behaviour/ getting ‘in trouble’* 6

Parental drug/alcohol use 5

Parental domestic violence 5

Significant health problems 3

Parents who offend 3

Young carers 3

English as second language 3

Disabled young people 2

Asylum seekers and refugees 2

Those who run away* 2

Living in poverty 2

Self-harm* 2

BME backgrounds 2

Parents with mental health issues 2

NEET* 2

*Denotes ‘behavioural’ vulnerability

Examples of vulnerable groups seemed to fall broadly into two categories: where young people were experiencing particular problems which might be considered part of their social environment or circumstances, and where young people were considered to display ‘problem’ behaviour (marked in the table with asterisks).

Where young people were involved in offending behaviours, they tended to be classified as ‘vulnerable’ in some way. One informant explained this during discussion about the video vignette of a young offender’s life story:

31 Informants indicated that they understood ‘sexual exploitation’ as a set of circumstances which young people did not have choice in, rather than a set of behaviours. This issue is considered specifically later in the chapter (see 5.5.2).

He wanted to be seen to be hard so he was constantly thinking about what other people think of him and getting into a cycle of drugs, dealing and not telling people; also that made him more vulnerable (Project Worker, welfare service for ‘vulnerable’ children)

Warner (2008: 32) has described a ‘vulnerability/dangerousness axis’, where vulnerability can be used to indicate risk posed by an individual as well as to them.

Such a relationship was supported by the narratives of informants. As the retired Commissioner phrased it, calling a young person vulnerable was “better than saying the child is stupid or is neglected or deviant”. Given that ‘axis’ can have binary connotations in certain contexts, to emphasise the connectedness of vulnerability with ‘deviance’, a ‘vulnerability-transgression nexus’ is perhaps a more useful way of describing this inter-relationship, an idea developed throughout the thesis (see also 2.2.3 and 2.5).

Another significant factor which was viewed by many as increasing vulnerability concerned periods of transition. By and large, vulnerability was considered to vary over time and throughout a young person’s life course. Most informants felt that where a young person belonged to a particular vulnerable group this did not mean that their classification as vulnerable would apply for their entire life-course.

However, there were two exceptions where practitioners felt that if someone was vulnerable at any point in their lives then they would always remain so. Many informants highlighted that ‘vulnerable’ young people were often those who were dealing with a number of the issues indicated in Table 5.2, or as Commissioner B said, “kids sit in different numbers of vulnerable groups”. Although there were categories which were associated with vulnerability, the classification was still seen by most as something which operated on an ‘individual’ basis. The same informant also commented:

... vulnerability is an assessment that is made about an individual child and so you just don’t just become vulnerable because you’re in a category (Commissioner B, City Council Children’s Unit)

Right across the sample of informants, young people’s responses to their circumstances was central to practitioner understandings of young people’s vulnerability.

... it’s not just about your home and your environment and your relationships but what your own individual personality brings into the equation (retired Commissioner, City Council Children’s Unit)

This is particularly pertinent in terms of exploring tensions between ‘vulnerability’

and ‘transgression’ in services for young people, and is considered in more detail later in the chapter (5.4).

5.1.5 ‘Universal’ Vs ‘particular’ understandings

The variety of positions in which practitioners placed ‘vulnerable’ young people on the ‘windscreen’ common assessment tool (see figure 5.1) and more general comments about the malleability of ‘vulnerability’ often indicated a tension was evident between ‘universal’ and ‘particular’ notions of the concept. In other words, sometimes all children were positioned as ‘vulnerable’, sometimes it was only a notion applied to particular groups. That all children were potentially vulnerable seemed to be an aspect of the management of vulnerability which was in some way troublesome when the concept was operationalised:

... we can describe almost any young person as vulnerable [laughs] because they are! Young people have to go out and risk take, and find out for themselves what their identity is and what their strengths are, so I think there's a slight problem in that it is not easily defined, and it might be that what I see as vulnerable even what another agency sees as vulnerable, so I think there is some difficulty in that it's a bit of the vague word (Senior Clinical Psychologist, CAMHS)

Such discussions were often located within considerations of developmental models of childhood:

... it’s about recognising that young people and children by their very nature are vulnerable. In terms of development, when a child is born they are

massively... They are about as vulnerable as they can be, and as they grow up and develop it’s almost like you're equipping them with the skills to be less vulnerable and more self-sufficient (Manager, FIP)

A number of informants also commented that all individuals (not just children) are vulnerable to a certain extent. As my literature review highlighted, there has been an interest amongst certain academics in ‘universal’ notions of vulnerability as a potentially powerful citizenship model (see 2.1.3 and also Turner, 2006; Beckett, 2006; Goodin, 1986; Fineman, 2008). Findings from this case study would suggest that ideas about universal vulnerability would seem to be shared by practitioners to some extent. Furthermore, amongst the strongest themes to emerge from such understandings of vulnerability was an emphasis on its relationship to social support systems (see table 5.1). This underlines a sense that vulnerability had a conceptual resonance with more socially constructed ideas of disadvantage which the ‘vulnerability thesis’ writers are interested in emphasising. However, looking more generally at how the concept is drawn upon, it would seem that in practice its deployment is more inclined towards particularism. In summary, 5.1 has discussed that informants considered vulnerability to be a popular concept in children’s services. The concept appeared to mean different things to different people and judgements about vulnerability seemed to some extent to be tied in with discretion and personal opinion.