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Juvenile Courts and Probation Officers as Change Agents in Turkey
Dr.S. Sevda Ulugtekin,Yüksel Baykara Acar

Abstract
As a community-based treatment form, probation is a new and undevelopment, but, a rapidly developing field of social work in Turkey. This article seeks to provide a brief assessment of this new field in addition to investigating whether social workers function as change agents and also include information related to this role while writing their probation reports. Payne’s (1997) systems model formed the conceptual framework
while analyzing content of probation reports. Probation reports obtained from four different juvenile courts in Turkey and, for the current study, researchers analyzed 926 probation reports of 219 children. Major research findings showed that as change agents, probation officers mainly excercise enabling role followed by facilitating and teaching roles. Mediating and educating roles, which are essential roles while working and
including the environment in the probation process, are also practiced rarely. It was also interesting that organizing role was never undertaken by probation officers. Being the first study to examine probation process in Turkey constitutes the significance of this present article. Another significance of this study is that it reflects the process of probation in a different cultural context. It is hoped that this study will encourage the
building of bridges between researchers and those take role actively in the field of juvenile justice system.

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