ReadingNotes

How do you identify and note immediate concerns and risk factors?

Let’s begin this section by looking a little more closely at the meaning of ‘risk’ as it relates to young people. Risk can stem from urgent or immediate concerns that are:

  • Psychological
  • Mental
  • Physical

Youth workers need to be very conscious of, and continually checking for, indicators of risk in their work with young people. This means getting to know the young people they are working with very well so that they are in a position to make an informed judgment about the young person’s needs and concerns and to know when these needs and concerns indicate a level of risk that needs to be addressed.

For example, most people would agree that risk-taking is essential for growth and development. However, risk taking can have either positive or negative outcomes. As youth workers we need to be aware of continual and extreme risk-taking behaviour by the young people we are working with and how this could ultimately affect the young person’s life.

Of course risk-taking behaviour is not the only cause of concern and risk for young people.

Indicators of risk for young people could include any of the following:

  • Serious risk taking behaviour
  • Trauma of grief and loss
  • Stress caused by relationships and social processes
  • Depression/withdrawal
  • Mental/psychological conditions
  • Separation from family and social support
  • Shame and guilt
  • Cultural conflict and alienation
  • Anti-social behaviour and attitudes

The young people you work with could be ‘at risk’ through, what the Child Protection Act 1999 of Queensland refers to as ‘harm’.Risk for the young person as it relates to harm can be any of the following:

  • Harm caused by someone known to the young person
  • Harm caused by someone the young person doesn’t know (including system abuse)
  • Self-harm

Let’s look at each one of these in more detail.

Harm caused by someone known to the young person

Information from the Queensland Government Department of Communities tells us that the causes of harm to children and young people are numerous. This includes harm arising from physical abuse and physical neglect, emotional abuse and emotional neglect, and sexual abuse and exploitation and that these types of harm are often caused by someone known to the young person.

Indicators of abuse can be grouped into four main categories but could manifest in any combination. These are:

  • Indicators of Neglect
  • Indicators of Physical Abuse
  • Indicators of Sexual Abuse
  • Indicators of Mental Abuse

Harm caused by someone the young person doesn’t know

Harm caused by someone the young person doesn’t know can range from gang violence in the streets to ‘systems’ abuse. This could include:

  • Bullying
  • Stalking
  • Spiking drinks at social gatherings
  • Internet chat room violation of privacy
  • Sexual abuse – rape
  • Deprivation of freedom/held against will

When we speak of ‘system’s abuse’, we mean what sometimes happens to young people through government and legislative processes that are in place with the intention of protecting the general public. This can in fact leave the young person feeling and being abused either through what is imposed on them or through being deprived of something that is available to others but not available to them.

Adapted from the Bremer Institute of TAFE Open Learning Resource CHCYTH2C Provide care and protection for young people. Pages 27 – 30.

System’s abusecould include:

  • Being abused in care
  • Not being believed by authorities
  • Being subjected to long interrogation (e.g. police interviews, court, medicalprocedures)
  • Not being eligible for certain benefits available to older people
  • Multiple placements due to lack of available services including foster carers or‘residentials’.
  • Lack of education due to not attending school consistently through multipleplacements
  • Being targeted by authorities because of race, culture, age, choice of associates etc.

Self-harm

Self harm can either be related to deliberately injuring oneself or to inflicting injury to oneself in a more indirect way. Self harm is considered to be a ‘destructive coping mechanism for dealing with psychological problems’.

Forms of self harm could include:

  • Serious risk-taking behaviour – e.g. violence, reckless driving, train surfing, unprotected sex, alcohol abuse, drug taking, glue sniffing, chroming, petrol sniffing
  • etc.
  • Placing self at risk with known offenders, committing crime
  • Neglect – not attending to health issues, eating disorders, poor hygiene
  • Self mutilation
  • Suicide

The Better Health Channel Fact Sheet, Victoria 2004,

advises us that some of the many reasons why a person might self-harm could include:

  • Low self esteem
  • Poor body image
  • Self-hatred
  • Post traumatic stress disorder
  • The belief that punishment is deserved
  • Strong feelings of anxiety or depression
  • Emotional numbness (feeling physical pain is ‘better’ than feeling nothing)
  • In response to physical, sexual or emotional abuse.

Risk Identification

The authors of the text “At-Risk Youth: A Comprehensive Response 2nd Edition”, cite a quotation in Chapter 5 Individual Characteristics of High-Risk and Low-Risk Children and Youth about “risk” and young people.

“Most young people develop adequate knowledge, positive behaviours, pro-social attitudes, and other health characteristics. For them the risk of future problems is low. Others are less fortunate. At-risk children and adolescents do not acquire the knowledge, behaviours, attitudes, and skills they need to become successful adults. They frequently exhibit interlocking dysfunctional patterns of behaviours, cognitions, and emotions early in life and especially in their early school years. If this pattern is not reversed, it may develop into a self-fulfilling prophecy, a downward spiral of multiple problems that could include school failure, drug use, teen pregnancy, delinquency, and suicide.”

(Jessor, 1993)

Some questions you could ask yourself to determine how you could identify a level of risk to a young person:

What have I learned in my interviews or my discussions with the young person?

What have I observed? (e.g. cutting marks on arms etc.)

What are the issues?

Has the level of risk to the young person changed?

Why do I think that?

Who should I discuss this with further to ensure that I am “reading the signs” correctly?

What action do I need to take to meet my duty of care responsibilities?

Once an initial “risk identification” has been made and those involved have come to the conclusion that there is some risk or potential risk to the young person, all workers involved have a “duty of care” (which we will discuss later in this section) to categorize the risk or the potential risk to the young person and then act on it.

When you suspect that a young person is at a level of risk that needs your and others immediate attention, you need then to make a more rigorous risk assessment and act quickly.