Disrupting professional practices with research-driven intervention. Researcher–gatekeeper negotiations in the context of targeted youth services

Gatekeepers as facilitators or deniers of access

In order to understand the various roles that gatekeepers play, and the many positions that they hold, one must first recognize that several groups of gatekeepers provide access to the research field across the formal-informal continuum. In Emmel et al.’s research (2007), where access was sought to socially excluded people from low-income estates through health and social care providers, a distinction was made between formal, comprehensive and informal gatekeepers. While the term formal gatekeepers refers to those who have limited community involvement and who implement statutory measures to address social exclusion, the term comprehensive gatekeepers refers to professionals who implement services and have close connections with the community. In turn, the expression informal gatekeepers refers to those who live and work in the communities in question and use personal resources to support socially excluded people (Emmel et al., 2007). It is important to note that in hierarchical organizations, gatekeepers’ relationships with one another are affected by the power imbalances that exist between them (Nugus et al., 2012). In addition, while it is a gatekeeper’s duty to safeguard the interests of a particular organization, professional body, or vulnerable group in society (Reynolds, 2002), different types of gatekeepers may have different priorities in regard to the primary objects of protection.

Another way to map the different positions of gatekeepers is to look at their motives and interests in cooperating with researchers. As instrumental individuals who can help or hinder research, gatekeepers’ attitudes can vary depending on whether they believe that the research may benefit their work or its participants. Clark (2010) has identified mechanisms that either support or challenge research engagement and the relationships between gatekeepers and researchers in studies on children and families. For factors that support research engagement, he discusses political representation, the identification of good practices, and the civic and moral responsibility to engage. For factors that challenge research engagement, he identifies intrusion and disruption, differing ideas about valid methods, and fears concerning negative representation.

Previous literature on youth studies has offered examples of positions for and against research engagement and sheds further light on the diverse motivations of gatekeepers. For instance, Aaltonen’s study (2017) explored the potential prospects and actual choices of 15- to 16-year-old students who were at the margins of compulsory education. The study’s participants were recruited through programs that offered students targeted support. The amenability of institutional gatekeepers, in addition to their active role in encouraging and monitoring participation, was partially due to the staff members’ belief that research participation would foster a sense of responsibility in the young people and support their program’s aims of rehabilitation and extracurricular learning. In turn, Aaltonen was expected to comply with the program’s aims and to support it. This type of reciprocal relationship has been referred to as payback for institutional involvement in a research project (David et al., 2001). All the same, eager gatekeepers and their pedagogical aims to promote participation can compromise the ability of young people to give their unbiased and informed consent to participate in research (Curtis et al., 2004; Denscombe and Aubrook, 1992; Heath et al., 2007).

Potential gatekeepers can oppose research proposals for a variety of reasons. First, gatekeepers may consider some research to be burdensome, especially if they struggle with heavy workloads and have every reason to feel reluctant to accept extra tasks. In cases like these, gatekeepers may have little incentive to consider external research that does not stem from their own interests (Ward and Henderson, 2003). Second, some gatekeepers may consider certain research to be unequivocally threatening to their clients and institutions. Research and the production of data on particular issues may also be deemed harmful for young people in contributing to a negative portrayal of young people or specific youth groups (Reynolds, 2002). There is also a concern that the research process may disturb the delicate and trust-based relationships that exist between professionals and the young people who enroll in youth programs (Aaltonen, 2017), or confirm the existing mistrust between gatekeepers and research participants who are part of a closed and authoritarian institution, such as a residential youth care program (Honkatukia et al., 2003). Finally, research can be viewed as having little value in the day-to-day work that youth programs administer (Ungar et al., 2015). These viewpoints are justifiable and should be shared with researchers so that they may rethink their research and its implications for both gatekeepers and its participants.

From different forms of knowledge to co-operation

One way to understand the negotiations that take place between gatekeepers and researchers is to examine the different types of knowledge that the two groups might possess. In their research on the use of experiential knowledge in youth and mental healthcare policy, Baillergeau and Duyvendak (2016) illustrated distinctions between expert, clinical, and lay knowledge. Expert knowledge denotes scientific knowledge that is based on research and statistical analyses of past phenomena. In turn, clinical knowledge is developed by professionals who are engaged in everyday practice. It combines scientific knowledge with practical experience and is rooted in training, professional education, and professional experience. Finally, lay knowledge is grounded in experiences that result from the challenges of everyday life (Baillergeau and Duyvendak, 2016).

In conventional research settings, in which gatekeeping professionals merely direct participants towards researchers, different types of knowledge are kept separate. However, in research that aims to develop work practices or introduce new ones, different types of knowledge must be brought together. These processes are conceptualized by Stephen Kemmis (2009), who speaks from an action research ¹ perspective and defines transformative research as operating at the following three levels: cultural-discursive, socio-political, and material-economic. At each level, different aspects of reality are tackled. At the cultural-discursive level, the focus is on transforming ‘sayings’ and ways of conceptualizing professional surroundings. At the socio-political level, a variety of ‘relatings’ are transformed. In other words, the socio-political level encompasses the development of relationships between different professional groups. Finally, operating at the material-economic level equates to the transformation of ‘doings’ for organizing professional practices, and carrying out one’s work.

Some researchers have considered the division in transforming ‘sayings’, ‘relatings’ and ‘doings’ to be a hierarchical and often sequential process. In a professional setting, it can be difficult to transform ‘doings’ without first developing relationships and common knowledge between researchers, professionals, and their clients. The precondition for transforming ‘relatings’ between different stakeholders is the ability to create a common vocabulary that enables rapport, reflexivity, and mutual understanding. The precondition for transforming ‘doings’ is to establish cooperation across various positions, as clients and researchers lack the operational power in professional organizations to change common daily practices alone. Moreover, new methods for implementing common practices often require cooperation between different groups of professionals. This might include the development of new ‘relatings’ between hands-on workers and administrators within an organization or new ‘relatings’ between professionals across several organizations. In other words, it is difficult to lead research projects that aim to develop practices or ‘doings’, as these require several steps for different interventions to be executed.

This paper will apply the aforementioned distinctions related to the different types of gatekeepers and knowledge to our experience in engaging with gatekeepers. We will analyze the steps we took with young people and youth work professionals to reach a point where revising or at least disrupting ‘doings’ became possible. While this article draws on the aforementioned discussion, some terms have been renamed to fit the paper’s aims. Instead of expert knowledge, we will refer to scholarly knowledge, and instead of clinical knowledge and comprehensive gatekeepers, we will use practical knowledge and practical gatekeepers to better convey the positions and expertise of gatekeeping professionals in the context of this study. Further, it is important to highlight that different kinds of knowledge are not to be understood as hierarchical or exclusive, but interconnected and complementary.

Negotiations before starting a research project

The current study focusing on young adults outside education or employment is conducted within a larger consortium project entitled ‘Inclusive Promotion of Health and Wellbeing, PROMEQ’, which aims to develop and demonstrate new models for the promotion of health and wellbeing that are attractive and engaging for underprivileged groups in Finland. The consortium is funded by the Strategic Research Council (SRC) of the Academy of Finland, which underlines “active collaboration between those who produce new knowledge and those who use it” (SRC 2017). This aim has implications for the negotiations with the gatekeepers.

Before the funding was received during summer 2016, the PROMEQ consortium had been shortlisted for the first call of the Strategic Research Council and had been invited to the second stage of the call. Hence, initial contact with the prospective research collaborators was made in February 2016 when the heads of the municipal youth service in two cities, Kouvola and Vantaa, were contacted by phone and email to provide outlines for the project and the tentative plans for intervention introduced as an online community for group discussions, and to request commitment letters as attachments to the funding proposal. As often tends to be the case, the limited timeframe of the application process prevented extended discussion with both young people, and workers holding various positions within the municipalities. While even in the largest cities, ² youth service departments are often small, administrative personnel frequently have limited community involvement and lack direct access to young people. Furthermore, it was up to the administrators to decide whether they needed to consult their hands-on youth workers before signing the commitment. Due to previous research collaboration between Aaltonen and city municipalities, she and her background organization were familiar with both cities, which contributed to their commitment to her research. However, it is worth noting that three other cities declined the invitation to take part in the project due to unexpected staff changes and concerns regarding the extra workload that the project would entail. Two of these cities were known to have negotiated with hands-on youth workers who had chosen to opt out. One of these cities, Jyväskylä, subsequently agreed to take part in the project.

In the sections that follow, the paper will examine the research negotiations that took place between various gatekeepers and researchers after the consortium was included in the SRC funding program in May 2016. ³ First, we will analyze the negotiations we had with gatekeepers, such as administrators and hands-on youth workers by applying the notion of different types of knowledge. Second, we will take a closer look at the level of cooperation that was required to work with targeted young people and our attempts to broaden the roles of youth and social workers as co-creators – not just to grant access, but to act as moderators in a research-driven intervention. We will illustrate our analysis with extracts from transcripts and field notes.

Positions of formal and practical gatekeepers

Trust and involvement with stakeholders at different levels is vital for research that aims to cooperate with professionals. In this project, the actors included young people, hands-on youth workers, and administrative personnel in municipal youth work. In order to involve and build trust with the professionals, we sent emails and attached documents that provided information on the project’s design, and held face-to-face meetings at the youth services’ premises. After being included in the SRC funding program, the consortium coordinators sent a formal announcement to managers and middle-level supervisors who had initially acted as formal gatekeepers for the project (Emmel et al., 2007). They were later contacted by the first author with a request for the workers’ contact information and the expressed intent to organize a joint meeting with them. This correspondence stated that we, the researchers, “wish to discuss the study, the interventions and the aspirations of both parties”. We had been made aware of some of the service heads’ and mid-level supervisors’ aspirations, as these were discussed when we initially sought commitment. These actors viewed the research and its aims positively and expressed appreciation of the new and potentially innovative ways that they might conduct daily practices, measure the effectiveness of targeted youth work, and strengthen the legitimacy of the youth work profession (see also Nugus et al., 2012).

However, there were several barriers that prevented the flow of information between the youth workers and their supervisors. It may well be that the notion of intervention and the need to discuss the aspirations of both parties was insufficient in communicating the true nature of the design of the research. It is also possible that the email we sent may not have been discussed or even forwarded to the youth workers due to lack of time, lack of clarity about the project’s aims, or organizational gaps between managers, middle-level supervisors, and hands-on youth workers.

Once a meeting time for the youth workers and their immediate supervisors had been established, they were all sent a two-page document that outlined the design of the project, including the idea of online discussion groups as measures for promoting the wellbeing of their young clients, and the invitation to youth workers to co-create and moderate the groups. However, the degree of incredulity and confusion during the first meetings showed us that we should have invested more time and effort in developing common interests and knowledge. As the following extract reveals, the hands-on workers had only a vague understanding of our research. For instance, after reviewing the information we had sent them beforehand, several thunderstruck youth workers complained as follows:

Youth worker 1: I have to say that I don’t have any idea why we are here.

Researcher: Okay.

YW1: We just had an invitation to join this meeting.

Researcher: Yes.

YW1: And now I’m wondering about this project… You said something about how it will have an effect on our working hours …

Researcher: Yes, right. Did you get this paper [points at a paper on table] that I sent you via email? Did you receive it?

YW2: At least I didn’t.

YW3: Me neither. Was this something we received during the spring?

Researcher: No, it was last week, last Friday.

YW3: On Friday?

Researcher: Yes.

YW1: I probably haven’t had time to read it through. On no, now that I think of it, I did read it, yes.

YW2: I haven’t seen it.

YW3: It might very well be … we get all kinds of papers all the time […].

YW3: If this was something we talked about in spring …

Researcher: Well, a little.

YW3: People have probably forgotten it by now.

(Youth work professionals, 2016, group interview)

The workers’ reactions are understandable for a number of reasons. First, as the professionals had acted as gatekeepers in previous studies, they assumed that the cooperation would be limited to participating in a one-off interview and potentially in the recruitment of young people (Clark, 2010). Second, they were hesitant about the suggested method of inviting their clients to online group discussions. As practical gatekeepers (cf. Emmel et al., 2007), youth workers are required to maintain a close connection with their communities and the young adults who use their services. Hands-on youth workers are responsible for implementing the services that their municipalities offer, and immediately responsible for reaching the goals that these services establish. Most of these goals are related to individual counselling; therefore, it is important to maintain contact with a certain number of young people so that they may help them to proceed with their schooling and careers. Given these constraints, unexpected requests to cooperate in the development of group-based online discussions can have limited appeal.

To summarize, our research project put the hands-on youth workers in an ambivalent position. On the one hand, they had been formally committed to the project by being employees in their organizations and working under their supervisors. On the other hand, they were autonomous professionals who plan their work and invest a majority of their working hours in individual face-to-face counselling. As one worker stated, “To a large extent, we can do our work the way we want […]. For me, the day-to-day work is number one, individual tutoring. I don’t think that I can commit to this [research project]”. Moreover, while this work was, and continues to be, expected of them, the project, with its proposal for interventions, was probably viewed as a burden that was not compatible with their existing working orientation, rather than as an opportunity that they could benefit from.

Finally, as practical gatekeepers, hands-on youth workers are responsible for allowing or preventing researchers from speaking with troubled young people. Outreach youth workers often stress that the rapport between them and the marginalized young people they work with has been cultivated by their long-term client relationships (Rhodes, 1993). During our conversations, these workers stressed that because they knew their clients, they would be able to evaluate if they were suitable or unsuitable participants. As the following extract illustrates, they had a fixed idea about who to recommend for the project, which implies that they may exclude potential participants that they deemed to be uninterested:

YW1: We know who to suggest this [group participation] to in the first place.

YW2: Yeah, absolutely.

Researcher: Okay, it’s good if you act as gatekeepers, so to speak.

YW2: Right.

(Youth work professionals, 2016, group interview)

In another meeting held four months after the first one, a youth worker mentioned how she had met her supervisor that morning and only then realized that they had been formally committed to the project. Although she blamed her organization’s poor ability to communicate information, this example illustrates the complex web of relationships that exists within the research field. While it is a researcher’s responsibility to clearly present the study to all gatekeepers, it can be difficult for a researcher to remind gatekeepers of their commitments or responsibilities without compromising the equal relationship between the two types of autonomous professionals, or the ethical requirement to allow individuals to opt out of participation (see also Nugus et al., 2012).

In some cases, the youth workers were dubious about whether the research or the intervention could benefit their work or their clients. Some of their reasons for why online group discussions would prove unhelpful to the young clients included the following: “young people are looking for one-on-one meetings,” “our clients are not oriented to group action,” “it is easier to bully online,” and “there might be suicidal messages in the group.” During several discussions, it became evident that many of the youth workers felt the need to protect their young clients from both each other and possibly risky interventions from outside. In line with these anxieties, skepticism towards digital platforms has been presented in previous research literature as well. For instance, it has been claimed that online communication provides only superficial contact with groups that do not provide reciprocal dialogue (Nie, 2001; Turkle, 2011). The youth workers’ skepticism derived less from scholarly knowledge and first and foremost from practical knowledge, ⁴ but their concerns were reasonable and helped us to pay special attention to these questions to build a safe space for everyone through the online group.

Inviting gatekeepers to act as co-creators

This project aimed to broaden the conventional roles of gatekeepers and to develop new ways for them to conduct and provide their services. Our first task was to convince hands-on youth workers to approach their clients and to try to motivate them to participate in a research interview. The second task was to motivate these workers to participate in the co-creation of our intervention’s details. While the starting point for the intervention was research-driven (e.g. semi-structured online discussion threads), the actual themes, content of the discussions and level of moderation were left open for co-creation. Finally, we asked a select number of youth workers to volunteer as moderators for the online platform.

The first task was the least problematic. In the constant stream of different research and developmental projects that target disadvantaged young people, most youth workers are used to recruiting interviewees although, as one youth worker revealed, several research requests received through their supervisors were occasionally considered a burden. Nevertheless, in principle, matching interviewees with researchers can be a routine activity that does not disturb the status quo or change the conventional division of labor between researchers and youth professionals. The recruitment of a selected group of young people allows youth workers to function as facilitative but neutral figures who allow access to a certain extent, but prevent it when they need to protect vulnerable individuals. As a consequence, the scholarly knowledge of researchers and the practical knowledge of youth professionals are kept separate. Anything that happens after recruitment has little to do with youth workers and their service supply. While this type of cooperation might require the development of ‘sayings’, it does not necessarily require any changes to ‘relatings’ or ‘doings’.

Circumstances were quite different when it came to the second and third tasks, as forming a common vocabulary, participating in the co-creation process, and acting as a moderator requires the development of both new ‘relatings’ and new ‘doings’. The co-creation process was primarily fostered in the meetings with youth workers. In order to include young adults in the process, activity-based workshops were arranged to discuss wellbeing from their perspective and to acquire feedback on the content and tentative forms of the intervention. For those youth workers who focused on individual tutoring and who valued the protection of their clients’ anonymity, these types of gatherings may have been uncomfortable. The youth workers were asked to break the barrier of individual and confidential counselling by inviting their clients to semi-public workshops with other people. However, participation was voluntary and it is assumed that with some individuals the youth workers used their influence to keep the gate shut even at this point. Although the youth workers were also invited to the workshops, many of them declined the invitation and chose to retain their roles as facilitators. While the scholarly knowledge that acted as the basis for cooperation was intended to provide professionals with a foundation that they could improve upon with their practical knowledge, a number of professionals expressed the desire for explicit instructions, asking questions like “What would it be, this intervention? Do you have any real-life examples?” Consequently, some of them declined our invitations to co-create the intervention and restricted their input to commenting on the model’s design.

In spite of the aforementioned discrepancies, one of the starting points for the process – namely that the primary issue for the young adults in question was social detachment – was shared by both researchers and professionals and also underpinned by their respective knowledge bases:

The first thing that comes to mind, if I think of our young people and what is common to them, is loneliness.

(Youth work professional, 2016, group interview)

YW1: Some are so lonely that they need an adult person to be there for them

[…].

YW2: Well, I think that we have some visitors who lack networks, other people.

(Youth work professionals, 2016, group interview)

Based on previous youth research literature, we know that for many young people the significance of peer relationships peaks when detachment from family occurs (Cotterell, 1996: 6). In Finland, nationally representative surveys have consistently indicated that peer relationships are among the most important factors that contribute to overall self-reported wellbeing (Myllyniemi, 2008: 72–73).

In this study, the application of scholarly knowledge led to solutions other than the application of practical knowledge. In other words, as researchers, we had different approaches to the lay knowledge of the young people than the youth workers did. By adopting the perspective of previous research (Webb et al., 2008), it was possible to recognize the positive potential for pairing group orientation and online methodology with individual counselling. Furthermore, as some young people were unable to work or study at the time, scholarly knowledge led us to focus on their mental health, feelings of companionship, and the benefits of peer learning and support. Therefore, the intervention aimed to promote social connection by offering a low-threshold and light form of group activity that could potentially result in rehabilitative improvements for those who had histories of bullying and exclusion.

The youth workers’ practical knowledge allowed for various solutions when it came to supporting young adults, and diverging stances toward their clients’ lay knowledge. As indicated above, while many youth workers framed the problems of young people through social exclusion, they also viewed individual counselling as effective and as something fundamental that their clients pursued. Moreover, many youth workers reported that their earlier experiences had taught them that group activities attracted a minority of their clients. In some of our discussions with youth workers, they explicitly stated that their clients mostly stayed home or were afraid to leave the house. According to their practical knowledge, setting up meetings with their clients, let alone recruiting them to participate in group activities with strangers, would require considerable effort.

While as researchers we drew upon our scholarly knowledge to explore the collective wisdom and lay knowledge of the young people, the practical knowledge of the youth workers led them to think that lay knowledge was unattainable, unpredictable, or even dangerous: with insulting, offensive, and self-destructive behavior, young people can be a danger to themselves and others. For instance, several youth workers expressed concern that the online groups would increase their workloads due to the constant need to moderate discussions and monitor and react to emergency situations. As one worker put it:

If somebody in the online group decides that this is the day when I slit my wrists, who will react to that? And if somebody else replies ‘Yeah, go and do it’, who is responsible? […] It is very important to choose the people who can enter the group. For me personally, moderating the group feels like quite a big challenge. (Youth work professionals, 2016, group interview)

One essential element of practical knowledge and the gatekeeping responsibilities of youth workers is that most vulnerable young adults require protection not only from themselves and other young people but from research inquiries as well. Particularly in the context of outreach work, most hands-on youth professionals have developed close and long-lasting relationships with their clients. In this study, some of the youth workers expressed ownership toward their clients by calling them “my youth” (Kiilakoski and Kivijärvi, 2015). This may explain why some youth workers are protective toward young people who are marginalized or “over-surveilled” (Renold et al., 2008), as these workers do not want to put unnecessary burdens on the shoulders of the underprivileged. As many contemporary studies in the social sciences target young people who have fallen into the NEET category, denoting those not in education, employment or training, an obvious route for reaching them is through professionals and institutions. This was evident in our study as well. In both of our research localities, there were other ongoing research projects that were targeting more or less the same groups, as we witnessed situations where young adults were approached by researchers from three different projects on the same occasion: two of the projects were introduced in person and one through a written invitation.

As in all studies, gaining access does not equate with gaining consent (Aaltonen 2017; Miller and Bell, 2002), and this was also true of both the participants and the gatekeepers who contributed to this project. Although formal gatekeepers provided us with access to negotiate with practical gatekeepers on their participation, some practical gatekeepers chose to opt out. Nonetheless, we were able to enlist individual workers who were interested in and committed to developing online and group dynamics in their work. As one worker reflected, “This might be an added value to our work orientation, quite a cool thing.”

Conclusion: a step toward doing things together

In this article, our aim was to explore the relationship between gatekeepers and researchers by drawing upon our experiences in attempting to modify the practices of targeted youth work. In order to analyze our experiences, we explored different forms of gatekeeping and types of knowledge possessed by various stakeholders. In line with Clark’s (2010) research, we suggested that studies that explore these differences are particularly effective at facilitating knowledge about the mechanisms that affect research processes and the production of empirical data.

We argued that operating as a researcher in the field of targeted youth work requires an understanding of multiple positions and forms of knowledge. In our analysis, we indicated that the relationships between researchers and gatekeepers were structured by the gaps and hierarchies within an organization. Furthermore, we focused specifically on the frictions and negotiations that emerge due to the divergences between different types of knowledge bases. Although we managed to reach a consensus about how to proceed with our research, we can identify points where we could have improved our performance in hindsight.

If we picture the relationships in the research field as a triangle, where researchers, formal gatekeepers, and practical gatekeepers represent one tip of the triangle, it becomes apparent that the success of the research process depends not only on communication between partners and researchers but on rapport and the flow of information within an organization. The way in which formal and practical gatekeepers interact or share information with one another is often beyond the control of a project’s researchers. In the broader context, however, recent developments in scientific policy have indicated that these relationships have become increasingly relevant. The correlation between pursuing research funding and the emergence of funding instruments ⁵ that rely on the collaboration between those who produce knowledge and those who use it contributes to the ongoing pursuit of negotiation with partners. In this process, while the letters of commitment that are needed for research proposals are signed – without any guarantee of funding – by the formal gatekeepers, it is the practical gatekeepers who, if the funding is granted, engage with the researchers and undergo the messy procedure of producing data. As researchers, we can encourage communication between different gatekeepers so that all relevant parties are included in the initiated communication. However, in relationships that are based on rapport, equal partnership, and voluntary participation, it is an ill-suited solution to remind practical gatekeepers of their supervisors’ commitments.

Both researchers and gatekeepers often see value in the lay knowledge that young adults can provide. What calls for negotiation between gatekeepers and researchers are their aims and perceptions towards the research, its methods, and the young research participants who have different knowledge bases. While researchers may draw upon their scholarly knowledge to project what the participants could be (e.g. members of an anonymous group who support each other and use the forum to reflect on their lives), professionals may use their experiences to inform them of what their young clients are (e.g. individuals who are uninterested in group activities or virtual communication).

As the following extract illustrates, rejection, as an initial reaction, can turn into tentative support after mutual trust and a common vocabulary have been established:

Even though I resisted this idea in the beginning, it would definitely be great if we were able to provide peer support for those young people who are lonely and who have been bullied. This is so common among our youth.

(Youth work professional, 2016, group interview)

Hence, time is a critical resource in the creation of a common language and mutual respect that can reconcile different forms of knowledge and eventually result in cooperation. Unfortunately, because time is also a scarce resource, many research or developmental projects with short-term funding that aim to revise ‘doings’ may become limited to focusing on the ‘sayings’ and ‘relatings’ (Kiilakoski and Kivijärvi, 2015).

To conclude, in order to be successful in conducting joint efforts together with researchers and hands-on professionals, several quite simple things have to be taken into account. Our discussion has shown the importance of time, communication, respect and the need for professionals to see the benefits of being involved. Obviously, the best-case scenario would be for the initial research interests to stem not only from scholarly knowledge, but from practical knowledge as well. Even though the above guidelines might seem more or less self-evident, our research process has shown that, from the perspective of youth work and social work professionals, they are rarely fulfilled.