COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesMethodParticipants15 key informants: 5 care workers, 1 volunteer, 2 psychologists and 7 shelter managers, coming from differentorganizations, involved in assisting homeless people.InstrumentDeep interviews to collect information about positive and negative aspects of relations between helperprofessionals and homeless people, empowerment strategies and resources. All interviews (mean length onehour each) have been recorded and transcribed verbatim. Participants have been told about law in force on thematter of privacy.Qualitative analysis was carried out, data were processed by means of Atlas.ti software.ResultsA manipulative attitude of some homeless is one of the aspects highlighted as critical (Fig.1). In some cases, acritical aspect is the attribution of features, needs and behaviour typical of a homogeneous group of homelesspeople, underlying a stereotypical view of the phenomenon: “Our social service has financial contributions asinstruments for intervention, assessing needs financially, but financial grant doesn’t get positive outcomes,doesn’t help ... they perceive standardization as a negative factor: we are all homeless and so we have the sametreatment.”A positive aspect is mutual trust, which may support homeless’ motivation to face changes, improve skills andpromote self-esteem, in order to reach a positive personal identity. Further positive aspect seems to be that socialworkers take in account different expectations and needs, avoiding judging attitudes: “To be able to customizeinterventions doesn’t mean satisfy all demands, but trying to understand exactly what their demands mean,having a look at people and their problems, without treating each of them as any homeless who is coming toservice.”187