Communicating with minors in a lingua franca through a professional interpreter in the Flemish youth care setting: a qualitative and quantitative study

In this PhD project, we will study how the child support worker of the social service of the juvenile court (SDJ) decides whether or not a minor who speaks another language should be assisted by a professional interpreter during conversations between the child support worker and the minor. In order to answer this research question, surveys will be distributed among the child support workers of the SDJ and furthermore,  focus group discussions will be organised with the child support workers. A second research question aims to gain knowledge about how the interpreter interprets the communicative purposes and associated strategies used during the interview between the SDJ child support worker and the minor into the lingua franca used by the minor. To answer this research question, audio recordings will be made of the conversations between the child support worker and the minor who is assisted by a professional interpreter and who uses a lingua franca. The audio recordings will be analysed and the original utterances will be compared with the interpreted speech. The taxonomy of Wadensjö (1998) will be used. Finally, by means of focus group discussions, it will be investigated how the child support worker of the social service of the juvenile court (SDJ) deals  with the concept of vulnerability, which is specific to the foreign-speaking minor who is assisted by a professional interpreter in a lingua franca. The minors themselves will also be interviewed about how they have experienced the youth care support, particularly the linguistic support.