Understanding the ‘lived experience’ of unaccompanied young women: challenges and opportunities for social work

This article reports a small-scale piece of qualitative research, undertaken within a specialist social work team for asylum-seeking or trafficked young people, in a rural local authority in the UK. Following a multi-perspectival approach, it utilised both discourse theory and psycho-social theory to describe how social workers were drawing both on ways of talking and ways of feeling in their constructions of young women. The research concluded that a relationship-based model of social work is essential to prevent practitioners from falling back onto generalised social discourses or unconsidered emotional responses. It is further argued that social workers involved with this group of young people need access to specialist sources of training and knowledge outside of their organisation, and that building national and international links between practitioners in this field could further strengthen practice.