Youth Week: Continuing the conversation
By ANTHONY CASTLE
The National Youth and Young Adults Team spoke with young people about their worlds in 2019 for a research project that gathered the lived experience of adolescence.
Three years (and one pandemic) later, youth and young adults specialist John Marion sat down to speak to them again to see how their worlds have changed and what it means for the adults who support them.
“First, we sit down and have a conversation,” explains John Marion, youth specialist with the National Youth and Young Adults Team. “Rather than run a consultation about our services, we start with the young people and ask, ‘tell us about your life; what matters to you?’ It’s about understanding their circumstances.”
Lived experience research is built on the idea that to support young people, we must first understand their world. The research began in 2019 as The Listening Project, as codesign process for the Youth and Young Adults Team. John interviewed about 33 young people, 12 -25 years old, who embodied the vision of The Salvation Army; young people who had experienced hardship and injustice but had their lives transformed by the love of Jesus.
“Lived experience is built on the notion that the best people to tell us about young people are the young people themselves,” John explains. “Young people have particular insights into their worlds. We go and listen to them, not just the things we want to hear but the things that matter to them.”
“Adults don't have to give you a Ted Talk after. They just have to let you know that they understand what you're saying. They don't need to give you a speech about what I can do better. I just need you to hear what I'm feeling. It’s not a made-up thing. It's what I'm feeling.”
- interviewee 1
The lived experience research was conducted in every state, from the city to the country, and from different corps expressions. The process was intended to continue year-to-year but was disrupted due to COVID restrictions. Assisted by James Gallagher, Resource Coordinator for the Youth and Young Adults Team, the research recommenced last year and revisited 12 of the same young people first interviewed, with 55 participating.
“Second time around, we wanted to see if their lived experience had changed from 2019-2022,” says John. “Young people recognised that they missed out on a lot, with the teenage years being so transient. Some young people felt the pinch of ‘I can’t see my friends’.”
COVID-19 had significant negative effects on Australia's young people. Young people have experienced higher rates of psychological distress, loneliness, educational disruption, unemployment, housing stress and domestic violence. The lived experience research revealed that experiences of COVID were conflicting for many young people, with positive and negative effects.
“The interesting thing was how it was seen as a positive time for young adults due to the increase in payments,” John reflects. “For others, it meant deeper relationships. Others lost a sense of plan or purpose with their life. Anti-vax sentiment caused stress on families too.”
“The lockdowns made it very hard with my mental health with everything I was going through. So, a couple of times, I would go for a walk, and I was pulled up by the police, and I just said, "I'm just going for a walk. I live here."
- interviewee 2
While COVID has been a time of unprecedented disruption, the lived-experience research has highlighted that some perspectives haven’t changed much for young people. The core experiences of adolescence remain the same.
“In many ways, the research confirmed what we already knew,” John says. “Young people want responsibility, but they also want support. Independence isn’t the same thing as being abandoned. They want caring adults, they want mentors, they want people to cheer them on. Young people haven’t rejected the adult world, they feel abandoned by it.”
“We need guidance on how to do stuff, but we don't need you to do it for us or tell us how to do it. We need to find our way of doing it. And just because we can't do something perfectly doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to do it at all.”
- interviewee 3
The lived experience research underpins the spiritual framework of the Youth and Young Adults Team, a theological curriculum that informs all the resources, events, and campaigns the team oversees.
“In our society, we decide that young people can’t be trusted to make decisions, explains John. “That they don’t know better, that we know more, but when you sit down and have a conversation with young people, you can invite them to shape the future. We now have a group of young people who can speak into challenges and ideas for youth work.”
The lived experience research has shaped the development of young people for the last four years and will, for the foreseeable future, involve young people and practitioners as the research continues.
“COVID changed things between 2019 and 2022,” Johns says. “But what young people are saying isn’t much different; they just want to be heard. It’s up to us to start a conversation and keep it going.”
The final report on the lived experience research will be available from the National Youth and Young Adults Team later in 2023.
