Professionals' experiences of working therapeutically with sex offenders

[摘要] In the last 10 years there has been a growth in working collaboratively with sex offenders by focusing on goals, tailoring treatment to the needs of the client, and an emphasis on therapist features (Andrews & Bonta, 2003 ; Ward, 2002). This thesis explored how sex offender treatment workers are responding to working with sex offenders in light of the changes. The introduction covers the key concepts and theory relevant to the thesis, and highlights the aims. The second chapter is a systematic literature review investigating the impact of working therapeutically with sex offenders. The review highlighted the extent sex offender treatment workers are impacted by their work was inconclusive. The third chapter focused on critiquing the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI; Briere, 1995) as a potential tool that could be used to assess distress in sex offender treatment workers. The critique revealed that the TSI had good reliability and validity. The fourth chapter explored the experiences of sex offender treatment workers using semi-structured interviews. All participants reported enjoying their work despite experiencing some negatives (i. e., intrusive images, suspiciousness, and concerns about clients re-offending). This chapter also highlighted that sex offender treatment workers reported using a range of coping strategies to manage the work. In addition, it was found that sex offender treatment workers believed a genuine interest in the work, hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and circumstances outside of work were related to enhanced resilience. The last chapter of the thesis involved discussing the implications of the findings from each of the chapters.

[发布机构] University:University of Birmingham;Department:School of Psychology

[关键词] B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion;BF Psychology