Under pressure Repression in residential youth care

The goal of the placement of youth in residential youth care institutions is to protect the child from harm, to prepare youth to return to society and to offer them perspective. This dissertation is concerned with an aspect that threatens the effectiveness of residential youth care, and may even do harm: repression. By means of a scoping review, repression is defined as an authority figure intentionally acting in a way that harms the youth, or by an authority figure unlawfully or arbitrarily depriving the youth of liberty or autonomy. Of the many ways, repression can appear, staff members inflicting punishment is perhaps the most salient. But when punishment is used as a means of control or as an excuse of professional helplessness, it often leads to more problem behavior instead of less. Interviews with youth in residential youth care showed that they tend to accept structure, rules, coercion, and punishment, but when staff behavior is perceived as unfair or excessive by the adolescents they experience repression. Respect for autonomy and providing treatment that is experienced as meaningful by the adolescents seem to decrease experienced repression. Based on the literature study and the interviews the Institutional Repression Questionnaire was developed. Preliminary evidence was found to support the validity and reliability of an adolescent self-report questionnaire of perceived institutional repression as a multidimensional construct (abuse of power, injustice, lack of autonomy, lack of meaning, and dehumanization). This dissertation offers insights into recognizing and diminishing repression in residential youth care institutions.