| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 社會工作學研究所 === 95 === Cases of mistreated adolescents have long been neglected as low risk because of their sufficient ability for self-preservation. However, as adolescents’ sense of autonomy becomes stronger, a gap between their needs and professional treatment often occurs. This study intends to understand what adolescent case subjects’ thoughts are about the treatment provided by the protection system from their perception. The purpose of this study includes: (1) to examine the needs of mistreated adolescents and the impacts after the involvement of the protection system; (2) to understand what adolescents think about the services provided by the current protection system; (3) to discuss the significance of the involvement of the protection system toward adolescents; (4) to provide adolescent protection workers with practical treatment suggestions.
This paper tries to understand the experience from the standpoint of adolescent case subject as to how he/she has been served. The so-called “perception” points to the case subject’s subjective feeling and expression. The process has nothing to do with the examination of right or wrong, but rather focuses on observing the case subject’s need and feeling. Therefore, the writer adopts the method of qualitative research to describe the interactive experience between adolescent case subjects and the protection system. Through the assistance of the protection system, this study has chosen eight mistreated adolescents who ever accepted protective services in recent two years for study. Information is gathered through in-depth interviews. Research lasts from May 20, 2006 to July 30, 2006. During the process, this study has gained the permission from the case subjects and has followed the principles of confidentiality and privacy respect to protect the rights of the interviewees.
The analytical process of this study is divided into four major parts. Firstly, to discuss adolescents’ coping behavior to the mistreatment, their self-preservation and how they seek help before the protective resources are triggered; secondly, to describe the reality experience of those mistreated adolescents as they receive services from the protective system; the third part is to discuss adolescent case subjects’ perception and feeling during the process of resources operation of the protective system; the last part is to understand adolescent case subjects’ needs and how they have been affected and changed after the involvement of services.
In conclusion, this study has found that the “subjective feeling” is an accumulation process of emotion, event and experience. No matter it is a positive or negative subjective feeling, the scenario context on the back is always related to the three dimensions, namely the adolescents’ needs, service experiences and life experiences. Therefore, the writer has focused on discussing the process of influential movements among these three dimensions. The main points are as follows: (1) The coping behavior and need shaped from the past life experiences: The writer has found that the pattern of how they cope with violent events is just like a process of risk assessment. There could be two extreme behavior changes due to their attachment with the family and how well they can maintain the sense of safety after exposing themselves. This has clearly indicated that the past life experiences have shaped up the dimension of special and sensitive needs for protected case subjects. When such needs are not fulfilled, the coping behavior and defense mechanism are immediately triggered to protect themselves. Such situation also affects adolescents’ experience when they receive services. (2) From adolescents’ needs to decrypt the process of their being served: The needs for mistreated adolescents include a. personal safety protection: Adolescents whether being settled or not still have doubt on the level of personal safety protection and when the protection is not perfect enough, they tend to cope by not participating in or cooperating with the treatment. b. emotional support: No matter in the earlier or later treatment, adolescents always expect to be respected, listened and cared. But actually what they have felt may be mixed with positive or negative impressions due to different professional staffs and various scenario contexts. c. autonomy: During our observation of the service process, adolescent case subjects’ needs for autonomy is not likely to be fully realized. It may be caused by the influence of societal culture as most treatments are whole family-based. Another reason may be coming from the professional staffs who overly concern and interfere with the case subjects. Besides, this study has also found that although adolescents have strong will to express themselves, they usually convey their own opinion by silence or through other mouthpieces. The reasons could be their sense of helplessness, limited information, lack of experience of making decision on their own and low self-esteem. Therefore, most commonly, adolescents express their opinion in a vague manner that results in their opinions being changeable or misunderstood and cause all sorts of unsteadiness during the treatment process.
In addition, most of the adolescents also indicate that ever since their receiving the treatment, their sense of safety has been raised and they have put more trust on the professionals. With more careful examination, we find that actually the meaning of the protection system to adolescents have changed from a protective role at the beginning to a supporting and accompanying role as soon as their relationship with the family becomes more steady.
Finally, from looking into the value of adolescent protection, this study suggests that social workers should empower adolescent clients from the perspective of respecting their autonomy and to look seriously at the special nature of the cases of mistreated adolescents; regarding treatment strategy for adolescent protection work, this study has also proposed to carry out independent living and assist families in facing crisis events, and provided suggestions on the suitability of relative foster family and the improvement of settled environment. The researcher’s afterword is attached at the end of this paper to retrospect those gains and emotions experienced during the research process.
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