NCJ Number
216036
Journal
Child Maltreatment Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2006 Pages: 146-156
Date Published
May 2006
Length
11 pages
Annotation
Findings are presented from a study which explored the current levels of consensus among practitioners in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland regarding good practice in relation to youth who are sexually abusive.
Abstract
The findings from this study provide important indicators about the extent to which practitioners agree on the elements of best practice in response to adolescent sexual aggression. First, the findings suggest strong agreement among respondents that youth who are sexually abusive should be seen as a group that is clinically distinct from adult sex offenders. Second, programs of work designed to focus exclusively on sexually abusive behaviors in young people are seen as limited in value by practitioners and should be supported by attention to enhancing a young person’s broader life skills. Third, considerable debate remains in the field about the best way of meeting these intervention goals. Practitioners believe that a variety of methods and approaches are relevant to meeting the needs of young people. Fourth and lastly, practitioners have progressed since the 1990s when the main approach to youth presenting with sexually abusive behaviors was predicated based on that, without intensive and specialist intervention, such a youth would grow into escalating and more serious patterns of sexually deviant behavior. The findings suggest that thinking in relation to the adolescent sexual aggression field in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland has reached a degree of sophistication during the course of the past decade. This article presents findings of a Delphi study of the views of practitioners, experienced in work with youth who are sexually abusive, throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Their views were gathered and analyzed to establish the degree to which there was consensus in the field about principles of work, preferred terminology, intervention goals, theoretical concepts underpinning intervention, and the content of intervention programs. This study was one element of a larger study supported by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Tables, references