Constructions of Resistance and Healing By Facilitators of a Statewide Youth Advisory Board

Background: This qualitative study investigates personal constructs of resistance and healing by 12 professionals who interact with a statewide youth advisory board in one state. For over three decades, youth advisory boards have brought together foster youth to work for positive change in the foster care system. These boards educate and empower members to be leaders and to advocate for positive change in child welfare systems. How state youth advisory boards are structured to empower members and improve child welfare systems is less clear. To increase understanding, this study describes an interpretive study that explores the perspectives and experiences of a wide range of professionals who interact with one long-standing statewide youth advisory board in a Midwestern state.

 Method: In-depth interviews with 12 facilitators of a Statewide Youth Advisory Board were conducted between August 2013 and June 2014. These interviews were a part of a larger study that investigated what current and former members learn from participation in the Statewide Youth Advisory Board. Research participants in the study presented include 5 private agency employees contracted with the state child welfare system to facilitate the statewide youth advisory board, 4 state agency caseworkers who partner with the SYAB to provide education and support to members, and 3 former directors of the state child welfare agency who met with members quarterly. Each interview lasted between 1 to 1-1/2 hours. The analytic process was based on immersion in the data and repeated sorting, coding, and comparisons that characterize the grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006). Analysis began with open coding of professionally transcribed transcripts (Straus & Corbin, 1990) and was followed by axial and selective coding. The team met weekly throughout data analysis and writing of the research account. Results were additionally presented to the state youth advisory board to guide the evolution of codes and categories.

Results: Over a dozen strategies for structuring the statewide youth advisory board to facilitate resistance and healing were coded and analyzed. A theoretical model was developed describing: 1) the causal conditions that underlie the development of resistance and healing strategies; 2) the phenomena that arose from the causal conditions, 3) the context that influenced strategy development; 4) the intervening conditions that influenced strategy development; 5) the actual resistance and healing strategies, and 6) the consequences of those strategies.

 Implications: Although the evidence-base is ripe with descriptions of foster youth transitioning to adulthood, this study is distinctive in its systematic examination of the resistance and healing strategies of adults who co-facilitate a foster youth-led leadership board (with youth members) in one state. The model establishes a framework for understanding the ways that youth advisory boards are organized to uncover dehumanizing conditions in out-of-home care; create a sense of belonging/networks; challenge boundaries between clients and professionals, and dismantle stigmatized views of self and others.