“…Seeing Them…”: Youth Worker Perspectives on Building Relationships with Older Adolescents and Emerging Adults in a U.S. City

Abstract

Less is known of youth workers’ views on their development of relationships with older adolescents and emerging adults in the U.S. This qualitative study examined youth worker perspectives on strategies used to develop relationships with older adolescents and emerging adults. Twelve youth workers and one key stakeholder participated. Youth workers based relationships on positive affirmation and trust. Youth workers developed relationships through non-verbal and verbal communication. They created space for relationships to grow and change. Study findings may be useful as a flexible guide for youth workers to approach building relationships with older adolescents or emerging adults in the U.S.

Keywords:

• Emerging adults
• older adolescents
• relationship development
• youth work
• youth worker professional development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Strongport is a pseudonym for the U.S. city where participants in this study are employed as youth workers.

2 Several participants shared Internet photos for photo-elicitation. Some of the internet images were noted online as possibly being subject to copyright. Due to this, I have described rather than provided photos as necessary in this article to prevent possible violations of copyright (Forrester, 2021b).