Young people have invaluable expertise to bring to process mapping work - they are the users of the processes you are trying to understand, so they intimately know what happens in practice and the impact different pieces of the system have on them.
They can help identify the highest leverage areas to make changes, and they can often come up with the most creative and simplest ideas to change those parts of the system.
The goal of engaging young people in these conversations is that their ideas, experiences and insights impact the outcome of decisions. That means we need to consider how to create an environment where they feel comfortable participating and their brilliance can shine.
Important considerations:
Identify the users: Similarly with other stakeholders, not all young people have the same experiences in the homelessness system. If you are mapping the assessment - referral process, ideally you would invite young people that have gone through a large portion of that process rather than young people who haven’t been assessed yet.
Deeper vs Broader Engagement: Getting young people’s insight into a process you are examining can be very simple or very complex - usually deeper engagement means hearing from fewer people’s experiences, and there is a tradeoff of not hearing from as diverse an array of people. Mixing low barrier and higher barrier opportunities for young people to provide insight helps even this out.
Consider Diversity all the Time: not all young people have the same experiences, and young people with different identities will likely have different experiences of the same process.
Caucusing V Together: A caucus is a closed group of individuals that share the same identity, background or interest. Some examples of different caucuses are: age-based, race-based, SOGIE-based, location-based, based on adjacent needs and based on adjacent systems involvement. Using the example of age-based caucusing within the context of process mapping, it might look like having separate, parallel sessions with service providers and young people with lived experiences of the process you are working to map.
There are pros and cons to creating separate space for young people to process map separately from providers. Make a decision about which you will pursue, or if you will create opportunities for both:
Pros: usually more young people can be engaged and more diverse experiences shared, young people feel more comfortable sharing failures of the system, there isn't an opportunity for adults to shut down young people’s perspectives
Cons: the dissonance between providers hearing young people experiences may catalyze change more quickly, it is faster to have everyone in one room
Strategies
Low Barrier Strategies
Pulse checking core problems: ask a bunch of young people in drop in or at shelter about something specific providers said to test if young people’s experiences match up. For example, after mapping out outreach hotspots, asking young people where the hot spots are; if providers say the reason that housing placements are falling through is that young people of a specific identity or background is X, ask young people “is it X? Or is it something else?’
Pulse checking change ideas: after the process mapping session, take your list of change ideas to a YAB meeting, or any milieu where there are young people who have participated in that process and ask a group of young people what they think of those changes - do they seem right? Would they have made an impact? Are these the changes you would make?
Surveys: keep them limited to as few questions as possible, and keep all the questions related to the process you are mapping!
Higher Barrier Strategies
Hold a YAB meeting or focus group (see our focus group tips here) with just young people to map the process from their perspective, then compare maps - wherever there are big differences, there is room for improvement.
Ask a group of young people to map out their own personal process map of the steps they went through, how much time they took, etc, then put all of those pieces together into a full visualization of the whole group’s experience of this process - talk about where there are differences, where the trends are, and what young people’s ideas are for improvements.
Facilitate a group of young people to create a perfect-world map - what would a map that would really work for young people look like?
Invite 2 or more young people to participate in the full process mapping session with other stakeholders. Prep them by walking through the agenda and talking through their experiences of that process to get them thinking about it. Prep the other group members by setting expectations about trusting young people’s experiences.
Next level: ask young people to gather other young people’s experiences and ideas and bring them to the process mapping session along with their personal experiences