No abstract

Youth Educational Centers (YEC) are open social rehabilitation institutions for socially maladjusted adolescents who are placed in such centres by court order. The wards who become self-dependent and return to their usual destructive upbringing environments give cause for concern. There is a risk that various social rehabilitation and educational measures taken in the center will be undone. If a person is to function well, they need to be provided with necessary assistance during the so-called self-empowerment process that will prepare them to function in society. This article is to draw attention to the impact of the YEC aiming at the self-empowerment of wards, exampled by the “Odskocznia” Youth Educial Center in Kalety.

The contemporary socioeconomic transformations in a fundamental way impinge on the shift of displaying social maladjustment among young people. The forms of social activities of, the adolescents undergo a transformation along with dynamics of the current social progress. Some youth, as a consequence of their behaviour and state of demoralization, become subjects of judicial proceedings and sanctions, such as residential rehabilitation or correctional centers. In order to capture the tendencies of youth’s social maladjustment a behavior research was carried out among 120 pupils sentenced by court to a youth care center. The author has undertaken a research indicating, the evolving modes of the youth’s social functioning and the diagnosed symptoms of their social maladjustment have been captured and researched by the author of this paper.