Workshop 2: Professionals working with vulnerable children and youth

On the evening of March 13th 2013, we held our second workshop in Copenhagen. At the workshop 9 professionals (social workers), working with vulnerable children and youth on a daily basis, participated.

Just like workshop 1, this workshop turned out to be very fruitful. The level of productivity and creativity was really high – maybe encouraged by the side remark of the productiveness of the first workshop, spurring a competitive spirit.

At this workshop we gained a great insight in the perspectives of the professionals – e.g. which ways of acting among the young people do they experience as being problematic, and what kind of behaviour can hinder their work.

The exercise of turning things upside-down and see the resources in the negative descriptions appeared to be more difficult in this
workshop, despite a great goodwill to embrace the premise that they could only mention positive things in this phase. The group also succeeded to mention a lot of interesting and new approaches in order to see what usually is considered as problematic in a more positive light.

Moreover, this workshop gave us insight in the challenges that professionals face in their daily work. And last but not least, some concrete suggestions came up about how or where to start if one wants to increase the ability of professionals to help young people in identifying and developing their own resources.