NCJ Number
88513
Date Published
1982
Length
177 pages
Annotation
Institutional and social policies shaped the attitudes of residential workers in a British community home for problem girls, called Westbury, where 40 girls and 23 staff members were observed and interviewed over a 2-year period.
Abstract
Researchers adopted a perspective emphasizing the girls' actions as 'rational' and psychologically 'normal' responses to their situation in contrast to the home's medical perspective (that the girls had problems requiring treatment). Both staff and girls agreed that they were sent to the home to get help in working out their problems. However, the girls saw the home as more restrictive and authoritarian than they had expected, and staff seemed more preoccupied with maintaining discipline than with giving individual counseling. Staff were divided between their concern for individual needs and their duty to regulate the girls' behavior in accordance with institutional norms and expectations. For example, good behavior was rewarded only for those who followed commonly accepted norms of feminine behavior. Thus, the treatment model functioned more to legitimate staff power and control over the girls rather than to provide a set of operational precepts and a theoretical framework for treating the girls' 'problems.' Tables, interview schedules, an index, and about 80 references are supplied.