Summary
PolicyWise for Children & Families prepared a guide for the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate Alberta to offer practical recommendations for ethically engaging youth experiencing houselessness. The Office of the Child and Youth Advocate represents the rights, interests, and viewpoints of young people through legal representation, engagement, investigations, and advocacy.
The Guide emphasizes three core principles for youth engagement: respecting youths' autonomy, maximizing benefits while minimizing harms, and creating equitable opportunities for participation. By applying these principles in their engagement approaches, adults can actively involve youth in decisions that impact their lives.
Policy & Practice Implications
- Facilitators should engage youth in designing and planning engagement activities to ensure they are relevant, accessible, safe, culturally appropriate, and respectful.
- The guide provides facilitators with actionable recommendations for all stages of engagement, including recruiting youth, setting up physical spaces, implementing informed consent processes, conducting flexible and youth-centred sessions, and debriefing with youth.
- Through scenarios, facilitators can learn strategies to apply in challenging situations that may occur during the engagement process.
- Within their policies and procedures, organizations can acknowledge and respect youths’ autonomy to make decisions about their lives, ensure youth receive benefits when participating such as fair compensations and access to supports, outline safety standards and measures, and mandate secure and ethical data management.
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