"Let's Talk About Sex": Conversations between Female Social Workers and Young Male Clients

社会工作实践需要与弱势儿童和青少年一起工作，包括那些可能受到儿童性虐待（CSA）、儿童性剥削（CSE）和有害性行为（HSB）关注的儿童和青少年。研究一直关注社会工作与儿童沟通和参与的质量（Lefevre, 2015）。当必须谈论诸如性和性等敏感话题时，这是一个特别困难的问题。有许多因素可能会影响这些谈话的性质和质量。本研究对性虐待和社会工作实践中普遍存在的性别叙事感兴趣，这些叙事是这些对话的背景。社会工作是一个“女性占多数的职业”（McPhail 2004），因此，在社会工作实践中，大多数与男性年轻人关于CSA、CSE和HSB的对话都是由女性从业者进行的。除此之外，大多数CSE/CSA/HSB的肇事者是男性儿童和成年人（Hackett, 2014）。在此背景下，本研究将深入探讨女性社会工作者和青少年男性如何在可能的CSA、CSE和HSB问题背景下协商和体验对话。本研究将采用定性的纵向方法，结合参与性访谈和民族志，以获得丰富的画面，了解在这些交流中，女性社会工作者和年轻男性客户之间的沟通和参与是如何促进或阻碍的。这项研究的目的是对社会工作实践中一个有争议和复杂的领域进行分析，希望了解是什么帮助塑造了这些对话是否成功。鉴于缺乏对该主题的先前研究，该方法将是探索性和归纳性的。预计将产生一个知识体系并将其理论化，允许在实践领域进行进一步的实证研究，并考虑如何最好地改进未来的社会工作实践。

Social Work practice entails working with vulnerable children and young people including those in the context of possible child sexual abuse (CSA), child sexual exploitation (CSE) and harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) concerns. Research has consistently identified concerns about the quality of social work communication and engagement with children (Lefevre, 2015). This is noted to be a particular difficulty when having to converse about sensitive topics such as sex and sexuality. There are numerous factors which likely influence the nature and quality of these conversations. This research is interested in the prevailing gender narratives in respect of sexual abuse and social work practice which serve as a backdrop to these conversations. Social work is a 'female majority profession' (McPhail 2004) and as such, the majority of conversations with male young people about CSA, CSE and HSB in social work practice are undertaken by female practitioners. Alongside this, the majority of perpetrators of CSE/CSA/HSB are male children and adults (Hackett, 2014). Given this context, this research will provide an in-depth exploration of how do female social workers and adolescent males negotiate and experience conversations in the context of possible CSA, CSE and HSB concerns? This research will employ a qualitative longitudinal approach combining participatory interviews with ethnography in order to gain a rich picture of how communication and engagement is facilitated or impeded between female social workers and young male clients in these exchanges. The intention of this research is to provide analysis of a contested and complex area of social work practice with the hope of learning what helps shape whether these conversations are successful or not. The approach will be exploratory and inductive in nature, given the lack of prior research on this topic. It is anticipated that a body of knowledge will be generated and theorised, allowing for further empirical research within the practice domain with consideration being given to how future social work practice could be best improved.