Social work organizations, especially youth welfare organizations, often find themselves challenged by their addressees and sometimes even reach their limits. Challenging moments can be e.g. violent behavior, breaking the institutional rules, drug use, etc. – if addressees act beyond the constructions of normality, that are expected of them and their behavior.

This can escalate into a so-called "negative interaction spiral" between young people and the help system (Baumann 2018), which in many cases ends up in the termination of measures and leads to a "youth welfare services career" (Hamberger 2008). In such cases, the young people increasingly lose trust in the help system.

Difficulties are by no means to be located only on the side of the young people and a challenging behavior. Rather, a "difficult case" only becomes such when the help system is activated in its own logic (Witte/Sander 2011).

From the perspective of organizational education, it seems worthwhile to investigate how the "inherent logics" of the help system can be described country-specifically and which discourses, structures and (power-)practices are embedded in such processes. Essential objects of organizational research such as routines, the division of labor, formalities, hierarchical orders, forms of management, etc. (von Groddeck 2015) can be examined with discourse-analytical organizational research in terms of the powerful knowledge orders that are embedded in and also produce these objects (Weber/Wieners 2018).

As organizational education addresses learning in, from and between organizations (Göhlich et al. 2018), the symposium asks specifically of what alternative organizational strategies and practices of social work already exist and in particular still can be established in order to be able to offer the addressed young people help that holds and endures them and that enables them to participate and be included rather than excluded. It's about gathering profunded knowledge and ideas about possibilities of “lifting the roof” of organizations in order to create change and transformation.

The symposium asks more concretely - both empirically and theoretically - about different organizational strategies of youth welfare in Europe addressing young people. From a discourse-analytical understanding of organization, it also asks about discourses and knowledge orders (Foucault 1973, Weber/Wieners 2018) that are embedded in existing organizational strategies. Furthermore, the symposium asks about possibilities of implementing leadership and transforming leadership in organizations and about how authority can be shaped anew and alternatively. Moreover, it asks for concrete innovative practices and their empirical exploration. 

The first contribution analyses from a theoretical perspective connections between changes of the view on educational processes and organizational transformation. It asks for needs of transforming structures, especially forms of leadership, in order to support professionals in interaction with young people with disturbed social-emotional development. For that purpose, it elaborates linkages to the Netherland theories and concepts of New Authority and Presence.

The second contribution addresses the impact of residential care on biographies decades after leaving-care. The contribution is based on data material of a qualitative research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation on life trajectories after residential care (1950–1990). It will give insights how young people manage to integrate residential experiences through their life course and where they keep on struggling (Gabriel et al. 2021).

The third paper from a discourse perspective locates a specific youth welfare organization in the discourse on so-called “problem youths”. In the discourse, two decisive dispositives can be identified: normalization and accompaniment. The contribution analyses empirically how the organization organizes youth welfare that is oriented towards the dispositif of accompaniment. For this purpose, collective orientations of action (Nohl 2017) are elaborated on the basis of interviews with professionals, which become particularly visible in dealing with boundary situations.

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