Reimagining Intervention in Young Lives
Work, Social Assistance, and Marginalization
Instead of asking what’s wrong with young people on social
assistance, this book asks, what’s wrong with society’s
normative presumptions about "at-risk" youth?
Description
Poverty and unemployment are on the rise among Canadian youth.
Reimagining Intervention in Young Lives looks at the issue
from the perspective of those most affected, revealing the difficulties
young people encounter with the “support system.” In-depth
interviews with forty-five young people in Ottawa reveal that solutions
do exist, predicated on recognition that the problem lies not with
incorrigible youth, but with a social-aid structure that imposes
barriers to success. Intervention is necessary, argue the authors,
but not so much in the lives of young people as in the faulty
structures that incorrectly presume how they interpret risk, poverty,
and their own potential.