Be prepared and do the best you can: a focus group study with staff on the care environment at Swedish secure youth homes

Purpose: This study examined staff members' experiences of the institutional care environment within secure youth homes.

Methods: Data were collected through three focus group discussions with 17 staff members at two secure youth homes. Subsequently, a thematic analysis was conducted.

Results: The analysis indicated two main themes: risk management and damage control in a restricted environment and compensating and reconstructing ordinariness-trying to make the best of it; each theme had three subthemes. The care environment seems to be experienced by staff as characterized by conflicting demands, thus constituting a gap between needs and what is possible to achieve-a balancing act that constitutes a constant struggle.

Conclusions: The staff members' constant struggle could be interpreted as conflicting moral and instrumental demands; they know what the youths need, but the environment of the secure youth homes demands the decorous behaviour of sociomaterial control practices-rather than care practices.