| Summary: | Previous research has evidenced that in different
institutional settings professionals are cautious
when responding to clients’ indirect complaints
and tend to avoid siding either with the clients/
complainants or the complained-of absent parties.
In this article we use the method of Conversation
Analysis to explore professional responses
to clients’ indirect complaints in the context of a
Therapeutic Community (TC) for people with diagnoses
of mental illness in Italy. Although the TC
staff members sometimes display a neutral orientation
toward the clients’ complaints, as is the case in
other institutional settings, in some instances they
take a stance toward the clients’ complaints, either
by distancing themselves or by overtly disaffiliating
from them. We argue that these practices reflect the
particular challenges of an institutional setting in
which professionals engage with clients on a daily
basis, have an institutional mandate of watching
over them and are responsible for their safety. According
to this interpretation, staff members’ non-neutrality
toward clients’ complaints can be seen as
a way of defending against the possibility, raised by
the clients’ reports, that the staff members might be
involved, albeit indirectly, in courses of action that
have harmed or might harm the clients.
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