On the edge: tailoring youth welfare work, youth assistance and education to vulnerable young people in Ghent

No smooth cooperation between actors

This project is situated in a very complex background of sectors and actors that come into contact with these young people. Connections are possible, necessary and can be a strength to help young people move forward. In practice, however, we notice that this does not always run smoothly. People do not always know the finesse of the other organization, both the possibilities and the limitations. There are assumptions and assumptions about each other that stand in the way of good cooperation.

Support through the eyes of young people and field workers

Through this action research we visualize the different perspectives. We investigate the perspectives of the young people on the one hand and the field workers on the other hand about cooperation on the fault line between leisure, youth care and education at micro, meso and macro level.

We opt for lifeworld-oriented research. We start from the perspective of young people and frontline workers. The design of the research is participatory. We place a strong emphasis on the development of vision and interventions together with practice.

Tension fields

In the first year we talked to various field workers and managers in these sectors in Ghent. This led to the first preliminary results and the formulation of a number of areas of tension. This is about, among other things

• difference in vision of problems among these young people,
• distance,
• lack of knowledge about what is happening in other sectors and practices in these different fields.

These results can be found in Report 1.

Action-oriented research: improving collaboration

The project is action-oriented and aims to contribute to a more in-depth analysis of these fields of tension and at the same time to search for connections through lifeworld-oriented intervisions.

In the second year two trajectories are running in which researchers connect to two existing cases that aim better cooperation . Through these cases we arrive at an action framework for social world-oriented intervision that can contribute to better cooperation between actors.

These results can be found in Report 2.