ABSTRACT This study analyses the role of youth workers’ confidence in Meitheal: an Irish model of prevention and early intervention in child welfare. This study had an exploratory mixed methods design. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with youth workers to analyse their knowledge of prevention, early intervention, Meitheal and partnerships in child welfare. These were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Additionally, youth workers completed a questionnaire to explore the levels of confidence in their role. Due to the small sample only descriptive and non-parametric statistics were used to analyse the data obtained. Youth workers see support and advocacy of young people as their primary role in Meitheal, despite this, participants described explaining what they do with other child welfare agencies as a challenge which was understood as a possible insecurity on the part of youth workers, alongside a presumption that their role and profession is not understood. Overall, this study found the need for youth workers to be more confident when engaging in Meitheal to facilitate their role and ensure that young people and their families are appropriately supported by the discipline of Youth Work specifically but also as part of the overall Meitheal model.

中文翻译：

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探索从业者信心在预防和早期干预儿童福利中的作用：以Metheal的爱尔兰青年工人为例

摘要这项研究分析了青年工人的信心对Meitheal的作用：爱尔兰预防和早期干预儿童福利的爱尔兰模式。这项研究进行了探索性的混合方法设计。对青年工人进行了半结构化访谈，以分析他们在儿童福利方面的预防，早期干预，Metheal和伙伴关系知识。这些使用归纳主题分析进行了分析。此外，青年工人还完成了一份调查表，以探索对其角色的信心水平。由于样本量较小，因此仅使用描述性和非参数统计数据来分析获得的数据。尽管如此，青年工作者仍将年轻人的支持和倡导作为其在Metheal的主要角色，参与者描述了他们与其他儿童福利机构的关系，这是一项挑战，被认为是青年工人可能面临的不安全感，同时还假定他们的角色和职业未被理解。总体而言，这项研究发现，青年工作者在参与Meitheal时需要更加自信，以促进他们的角色，并确保青年人及其家庭受到青年工作纪律的适当支持，这也是整体Metheal模型的一部分。