The time and community dimensions in socio-educational intervention strategies with adolescents in care during the transition to adult life

Abstract

The quality of protective action is related to the conditions in which the emancipation of adolescents in care occurs. The dimensions of timing and community are considered determinants for achieving the goals of the transition to adult life. The research aims to analyze which strategies professional teams use to adapt intervention times to individual needs and which scenarios of interaction with the community are facilitated during the emancipation itineraries. A qualitative investigation organized in three phases according to the grounded theory was designed. Two focus groups were carried out in which 11 professionals participated, 70 interviews in 22 longitudinal follow-ups for 12 months with young people in residential care, and eight interviews with already emancipated youth. The results indicate that professional teams use various strategies to try to minimize the impact of the deficits of the system, which provides insufficient accompaniment times. Institutional organizational design hinders the performance of community activities. It is concluded that the protection system needs to implement improvements that eliminate the deficits in the dimensions analyzed.