Exploring Empowerment from the Perception of Child Welfare Practitioners: Opening a New Time Horizon

ABSTRACT Although empowerment is increasingly studied as a concept structuring social intervention, there are still very few studies reporting on how it is perceived by practitioners in their work. This meaning is all the more important to grasp in the context of child protection, where legal structures and guidelines delimit and sometimes restrict the opportunities available to young people in transition to adulthood. Using semi-structured interviews with child welfare practitioners, our study aims to examine how they define and promote the empowerment of young people in care in their transition to adulthood. Results indicate that the transition to adulthood requires a time-based projection beyond the age of majority, both for the practitioners and for youth. Therefore, empowerment cannot be worked solely on a day-to-day basis, but must be part of a broader horizon, which is accessible through a community vision of intervention and service provision.