engleski

Competences of children and youth at-risk: professional’s perspective

Comprehensive scientific research, partly directed to validation and standardization of instruments for assessment of risks levels and intervention needs of children and youth in risk or with behaviour disorders is being conducted. For this purpose three instruments are used: YLS/CMI (Youth Level of Service / Case Management Inventory, Hoge, Andrews and Leschied, 2002, RFQ (Risk Factor Questionnaire, Scholte, 1998) and CBCL (Child Behavior Checklist, Achenbach, 1991). Topic of this presentation is related to Child Behaviour Checklist (Achenbach, 1991). This instrument consists of two parts: the first part is oriented on assessment of competences and the second part is related to the child behaviour checklist. As a part of the assessment of competences, informants (in this case professionals who work with children and youth) have to describe child's best sides. This presentation in based upon the analysis of open-end variable «Describe best things about this child». On the total sample of 998 children and youth in risk, who were at the time of research, included in institutional or community treatment in Croatia, 751 descriptions of best things/ characteristics of children/ youth were extracted. Descriptions are then processed in qualitative data analysis. Analysis of and insight in the best characteristics of children and youth in risk is especially important for planning, programming and successful implementation of interventions directed to needs of children and youth as well as to their potentials. Professionals’ ability to recognize the positive characteristics of children and youth is very important factor that could influence success of intervention. In the process of qualitative analysis certain characteristics related to positive personality traits, skills, interest and positive relationships are being defined. Data analysis is in progress, but preliminary results show that professionals recognize positive things in almost every child/ youth and that they describe them very extensively. Descriptions are found in almost 90% of questionnaires, which gives some guarantee that further quality analysis can generate new knowledge and insights that are important for practice.

competences; children / youth in risk; professionals

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