Being With Edgy Youth

by Kiaras Gharabaghi

This book provides a perspective on being with edgy youth that critically examines the consequences of conformity and compliance-based interventions and proposes a focus on being present and staying with edgy youth through their journey toward adulthood and beyond. The book provides an alternative way of thinking about edgy youth that will be especially useful to Social Workers, Teachers, Youth Workers, Mental Health Professionals, and all those other professional helpers who come face to face with young people who seem beyond rescue. The book also challenges all professional helpers to critically evaluate their own biases and assumptions about being involved with edgy youth and to be sensitive as to how interacting with professional helpers might be experienced by the edgy youth.

159 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2012

About the author

Kiaras Gharabaghi is an associate professor in the School of Child and Youth Care at Ryerson University and co-editor of the journal Child & Youth services. A practitioner for more than twenty years, he researches in the areas of residential care, children’s mental health, education and social pedagogy, policy and regulatory frameworks for youth services, and system collaboration and organizational change.