Participation

We believe that:

• Young women are experts on their own lives.

• Young women have innate resources, competence and resilience.

• People affected by a problem are best placed to find the solutions.

• We must shift traditional power hierarchies in service delivery in order to enable young women's participation in solution building.

• We must support young women to have their voices heard in order that they can influence the design and delivery of services.

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We therefore adopt:

• Youth work principles

• Participation principles

• Solution focused brief therapy techniques

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Youth work principles

In our approach we:

• Work ‘alongside’ young women

• Start from where they are and are led by their “felt needs”

• Respect their empirical knowledge of their own lives

• Encourage them to develop a “critical consciousness” of their worlds, their experiences, and how they are affected by these

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Participation principles

In our approach we:

• Work in a non-hierarchical way

• Challenge unequal dynamics power & oppression

• Tip the balance of power in favour of young women

• Ensure young women inform future practice and services

• Recognise that young women are best placed to identify issues and solutions

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Solution focused brief therapy techniques

In our approach we:

• Work to the young woman’s ‘best hopes’ or desired outcomes

• Engage with competence

• Look for alternative narratives of her and her life where she has previously demonstrated competence

• Obtain detailed descriptions of what life will be like when changes are made

• Trust the young woman’s ‘version of events’

• Are interested in the young woman and not the problem

• Develop techniques to understand and strategise around big and sometimes ‘unmanageable’ feelings