Project: Strength-based approach

Task: Review project requirements

Look back at the first topic in this module of the online course and review the section ‘Youth development project’. Reread the information in this section and refresh your memory.

Next, download and read Assessment 4.1, 4.3 and review the requirements for Project Checkpoint 1.

Introduction

Earlier in this module, we explored activities that promote the development of life skills like communication, behaviour management, and self-awareness. Now we will start on the strength-based project in which young people integrate life skills learning and practice through the process of planning, implementing, and evaluating a project. The project is a safe yet practical real-world learning situation for youth participation and leadership with outcomes set by the young people themselves.

The project enhances learning through a strength-based approach that puts young people at the centre of planning and implementing. The project’s goal is to promote autonomy and youth-led learning, but in a way that sets the young people up to experience success and achievement. Therefore, the level of youth participation and leadership will depend on who the young people are and your organisation’s requirements.

You will need to do some initial work to set guidelines and limitations for the project, but as much as possible support young people to use their strengths, knowledge, and skills to design the project and participate in its planning. The young people’s role in the project should include authentic decision making, participation and/or leadership.

What is a strength-based approach?

All young people have strengths they can draw on to find solutions, learn, and develop confidence, personal growth, and leadership skills. We adopt a strength-based approach when we focus our practice on the strengths the young people already have. We work with young people’s strengths in positive ways rather than concentrating on problems, weaknesses, or deficits. A young person is not a behavioural problem to solve.

A strength-based approach aims to empower and build up young people. It recognises and develops their resourcefulness, self-awareness, self-empowerment, and self-determination. It starts with what is already strong: what they already know, the skills they already have, what they feel confident about. It builds on their strengths through active experiences in safe learning environments and experimenting (giving things a go). A strength-based approach encourages self-empowerment as it supports young people to develop their own learning and skill development strategies.

A strength-based approach appreciates the mana young people already have – the mana everyone inherits at birth and accrues over a lifetime. We enhance mana when we recognise a person’s agency to make decisions about what affects them. We support and appreciate young people when we acknowledge their strengths, bring forward their voices and embrace their role in the community.¹

Principles and values that underpin a strength-based approach:

• Respect and empowerment
• Positive exploration of and working with an individual’s strengths
• Optimistic view of existing achievements to frame the young person as an expert on their own life with the youth worker learning alongside them
• Power sharing as a catalyst for creating change; refraining from displaying power over the young person
• Acknowledgment that a young person can create change by taking control of their thoughts, actions, behaviours, and future

Apply a strength-based approach to yourself

The young people you work with are experts in their own lives, and the same is also true for you. When you know and accept your own strengths, you can use them as the basis of stories to start discussions, create activities, or engage in one-to-one conversations to help young people explore their own strengths. Your actions, behaviours, and experiences influence the types of interactions you have with young people. You can use how you apply a strength-based approach to yourself and your own journey to connect with young people where they are at on their own path.

Personal growth happens when we know our strengths and what we can do (even if we are not experts). Strengths are a basis for confidence. We become eager to find out more about what we might be capable of as we build on our knowledge, skills, and personal attributes. Self-empowerment means even if our strengths go unacknowledged or our work is not validated, we keep at it.

We can approach our own development and learning in a similar way to how we use a strength-based approach with young people. As youth workers, it is essential we understand our own strengths, capabilities, and capacities as mentors and facilitators. We strive to be:

• attentive listeners
• invested in the process
• non-judgmental
• knowledgeable about life skills
• able to give targeted, constructive feedback
• interested in learning and teaching
• flexible and encouraging.²

Task: Rod Baxter’s webinar

Rod Baxter has been a youth worker in New Zealand for more than twenty years. At the following webpage, you can register and attend his webinar Working Within a Strengths-Based Approach¹ that has been made available after its original showing. The webinar will take 1 hour 30 min to complete. You need to register to watch the recording. When you have registered, a handout will be provided for download with key points on working within a strength-based approach. Read the handout if you do not have time to watch the full webinar. The webinar includes exercises. If you choose to do these please complete them on a piece of paper not in the online chat.

Note: Some of the resources linked in the webinar are subscription based or have a cost. As you progress in your professional development, you may like to add sites such as these to your kete of resources to draw upon when you need them.

Following the webinar, think about these questions:

• What do you think you are good at?
• What would you like to improve on or learn more about?
• How do these principles apply to your practice?

Task: Understand my own approach

Fill out this worksheet: Approaching your own work from a Strengths-Based Perspective³

After you have completed the worksheet, answer this question: What did you learn about yourself?

Based on your responses in the What fuels you? section of the worksheet, think about:

• What would you like to be doing more of at work?
• What would you like to be doing less of?
• What would you do with young people if you were two times bolder?

Task: Skills in action

Read through the worksheet Strengths-based skills in action⁴ and if you have time, complete the tasks by filling in your own imagined responses in the right-hand column.

The worksheet provides a scenario along with an explanation of ten strengths-based skills. Think about how you might use these skills in response to the scenario. What about with the young people you work with?

Working with individuals

Everyone is unique and different. A young person needs to understand their strengths to form a healthy sense of self so they can be in the world feeling effective, grounded, and self-confident. To help each young person to form a healthy sense of self:

• we accept each young person as they are
• we provide genuine opportunities for youth participation, inclusion, and self-determination
• we consult them on their own learning and development journey.⁵

It takes time, commitment and trust in a safe environment to break down years of hurt and mistrust to shift negative self-talk from statements like ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m dumb’, ‘I’m scared’ into ‘I can do this’, ‘I feel confident, I got this!'

Personal SWOT analysis

Use a personal SWOT analysis to help identify individual strengths and weaknesses (things to improve), opportunities, and threats. You can use it on yourself or with a young person to uncover things you are good at and things you could improve. Look for potential opportunities you may not have considered and things that could be challenging as you work towards change or improving talents and abilities.

You can download a worksheet at Mind Tools Personal SWOT Analysis.6

You may want to develop your own tool similar to the SWOT analysis in this worksheet that is youth-friendly and uses language young people can relate to.

Explore further

You may find the following resources useful to help individuals explore their strengths. You can reframe any terminology used in these resources to suit, as they are not specifically aimed at a youth work context:

• 9 Strength Finding Tests and Assessments You Can Do Today, including 6 Quick Character Strength Worksheets and Tests, from Positive Psychology.⁷
• Activities and worksheets to develop self-image: 21 Self-Image Examples and Activities, also from Positive Psychology.⁸
• The HIGH5 test: Discover the best part of yourself.⁹
• The 24 Character Strengths from the VIA Institute on Character.¹⁰

Working with a group

Everyone in the group can be a teacher and a learner because everyone has something to contribute to the group. Working with a group in this way aligns closely to the strength-based approach. Work with the group to establish caring relationships and provide opportunities for participation, learning and growth.

Task: Positive youth outcomes activity

Reflect on these questions:

• What is the difference between a skill and a talent?
• What is the benefit in being able to identify them?

In your role, you will encourage young people to identify their skills and strengths, so you need to understand the relevance and need for activities that can help achieve this.

Download the Positive Youth Development Resource Manual¹¹ available from the ACT for Youth website. On page 33 of the manual – Positive youth outcomes 2.4. Building on strengths – is an activity you can use with the group to help them identity strengths within the group. Think about how you could adapt or modify this activity to use with the young people you are working with on the project.

Life skills inventory continuum

A continuum provides a ranking of numbers to represent how a true or relevant a statement is.  This can be used as a standup exercise (see further instructions below) or in a written form. Use either one to suit the situation. The statements can be designed specifically for the group you are working with. Below is a written continuum example. This format may be easier to use when working individually with people. You can also use this as a model for young people to provide feedback on their learning. Use pictures with young people who struggle with literacy or numeracy if using a written continuum.

Rate yourself based on the following statements. Choose a number from 1 – 5, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest or most accurate for you. Draw a circle around your choice: 

Task: Stand up group exercise

When you next have the opportunity in a group situation, use the life skills inventory continuum above as an ice breaker, to lighten the mood during a workshop, or to find out more information about participants. It’s suitable for all ages.

Participants stand up and form a line from the left (representing 1) to the right (representing 5). Each person moves and stands in the position that best describes where they think they are placed in terms of how good they are at the following tasks, or how true they feel each statement is for them. Read out a series of questions or statements relevant to the information you are seeking. Some examples are:

• I am confident speaking in front of 20 or more people
• I prefer working in a team rather than by myself
• I like to be given clear instructions on what I need to do
• I prefer to problem solve with others rather than figuring it out on my own
• I am good at planning and organising myself
• I am good at organising and delegating to others
• I don’t mind hard work
• I like doing physical work where I get to move around a lot
• I enjoy meeting new people

You may want to allow some time after each statement for the participants to share more information about where they decided to position themselves, or to keep the pace up, wait until you’ve been through all the statements and share some results and reflections at the end.

Strength‐based information gathering

If you would prefer to assess strengths through conversations, here are some sample questions that you can use for information gathering exercises to learn more about the skills, talents, and strengths of the young people you’re working with. Think about what your own answers would be to some of these questions too:

• What do you like to do on a sunny day? What do you do (or like to do) in your free time?
• What is your favourite subject in school? (and other favourite things)
• What is the nicest thing you have ever done?
• What do you watch on TV? Movies? Music? – What does it mean to you?
• Who do you admire? / Who do you look up to?
• When do you feel at your best?
• Tell me something you could teach someone else.
• What do you like best about yourself?
• How do you think your friends would describe you?
• What are you most proud of?
• Where would you like to travel to? If you could go on vacation, who would you bring?
• What do you like to do to make you feel good about yourself?
• Where do you want to go with school? What do you want to do with your life?
• What do you think you will be doing in a year? Five years?

When using this format for information-gathering with young people use a conversational style – start a conversation on a topic such as movies or music and keep up a two-way conversation. Share some of your own answers to the questions. You may decide to focus on just three or four questions. You could invite the young people you’re working with to look at the full list and choose which questions they’d prefer to answer or let them choose which questions to ask each other.

Explore further

For additional sets of questions, read through this resource on Strength-based questions from Prevent Connect. This resource is designed for social workers who are working to support parents, but many of the questions will be useful in your work with youth, whether they are young parents or not. The strength-based questions in this resource are grouped into the following categories:

• Survival – what have you learned about yourself and your world during your most difficult times?
• Support – who are the special people on whom you can depend?
• Exception – what moments or incidents in your life have given you special understanding, resilience, and guidance?
• Possibility – what fantasies and dreams have given you special hope and guidance?
• Esteem – when people say good things about you, what are they likely to say?

Task: Design your own activity to develop a strength inventory

Develop an activity with a strength-based focus. The aim is to initiate conversation and exploration of the strengths the group possess to develop a strength inventory. It can be based on one of the examples or resources provided or one that you create yourself.

You will use this strengths inventory as part of your Assessment for the Project. See Project Checklist 1 for more details. You can carry out the activity or discussions to gather the information you need to complete the strength inventory.

Increasing strength-based awareness

Including other agencies and organisations in youth work is smart planning. It takes more than one youth worker to work with and mentor a young person. Build relationships and work together with different organisations to expose young people to other mentors and support options as they grow and progress.

This Community Connections Case Study is an example of how well-planned weekly activities involved the whole community in supporting a group of youth with disabilities to learn about community connectivity and to feel confident and safe approaching businesses and individuals. In this series of activities, the youth were put front and centre to plan and make connections within their immediate communities (with shop owners, local businesses, and community groups) to increase their visibility.

Create a list of potential agencies and other teams or service providers that can contribute to youth outcomes. This can help make a project easier to plan and offer support faster without having to wait so long for referrals or appointments. Sharing power is a catalyst for change. Collaborative partnerships and a team approach enable everyone’s expertise, knowledge, and resources to be shared and valued.

Our lives are shaped by the environment (including family, school, work, training, community, peers) and contexts we are raised in. They inform our memories, life experiences, behaviours, language, beliefs and values. It is essential that youth workers understand the communities and connections young people already have and integrate them into their practice. See Principle 2 of the Youth Development Strategy Aotearoa (2002).¹² The project that you will complete for your assessment is an opportunity for community involvement and connection.

Strengths as work-ready skills

For the project you will create a strengths inventory for your group. To do this you need to design an activity (or facilitate discussion) in which young people recognise the skills, talents and personal qualities they have developed through their life experiences and learning. You will work with them to practice, improve, and build on their strengths. You can also support them to think about how to transfer these skills or qualities into other areas of their lives like employment. This will also help to build up their confidence and sense of self-worth.

Careers NZ has activities to help young people plan for their future careers. They have compiled a list of the most important skills employers are looking for. Read through the list to help young people identify employability skills using their existing strengths and abilities.¹³ Young people can match their existing skills or reflect on those they want to develop for future careers they may be interested in. In this way, young people affirm that things they know how to do (skills), their strengths and personal qualities have value in the workplace. This can help to displace the self-imposed label some young people have of themselves as unemployable, and shift towards seeing themselves as someone with transferable skills that employers need.

The seven essential employability skills listed by Careers NZ are:

1. Positive attitude
2. Communication
3. Teamwork
4. Self-management
5. Willingness to learn
6. Thinking skills (problem solving and decision making)
7. Resilience

Learn more about a strength-based approach

If you would like to learn more about using a strength-based approach, these resources should be useful.

• Listen to a 12 minute podcast¹⁴: Reflecting on St Luke’s ‘The Strengths Approach’ and the early beginnings (Di O’Neil and Wayne McCashen). This approach provides a way of working with youth from a positive perspective as opposed to a problem-based perspective.
• Professional membership to Korowai Tupu gives you access to resources and a community of New Zealand youth workers.
• YouthAOD Toolbox has an article Principle 4: Strengths-based approach¹⁵ for greater insight on using a strengths-based approach for young people affected by trauma as a way to explore and challenge assumptions on why people behave the way they do when they are struggling.
• The Positive youth development resource manual you looked at earlier in this topic has several useful resources for youth workers, community groups and service providers. Each of the six sections has a different theme along with a further comprehensive section with links to sites and manuals. This resource will be useful moving forward on the project with activities and resources for project design and group facilitation.¹¹
• Also refer back to the previous topic in this module and Approach one: Strengths-based in the Positive youth development in Aotearoa document.¹⁶

Begin working on Project Checkpoint 1 in Assessment 4.1, 4.3

The purpose of the first checkpoint is to help you complete your initial planning, before you start working on the project with a group of young people.

By now, you should have what you need to explain how your youth work practice uses a strength-based approach. Design a strengths inventory activity that you will use with the group of young people who will carry out the project. You will need to complete this activity, and also write up a one-page summary of the project to hand out to the participants.

Read through the following documents:

• Community Connections case study (provided earlier in the topic)
• Project Scope Community Connections (example of how to use the template)
• Project Scope template

How you fill out the project scope template will depend on who your participants are, and the requirements of your organisation. You can use the project scope template to help write your one-page summary of the project for the participants to refer to.

After you have read the documents above, you are ready to start working on Project Checkpoint 1. You will complete this checkpoint at the end of the next topic.