Young People Services

Helping young people achieve their goals

We understand that every young person is unique, with different aspirations and support needs. Our support is tailored to the individual, allowing for choice and encouraging independence. 

We assign each young person with a key worker who will help them settle into their new homes, co-create SMART outcomes within the first month of their tenancy, and meet with them regularly to celebrate their progress towards their goals. If a young person is joining us from another service, we ensure these goals flow from their existing pathway to ensure continuity.  

We develop outcomes in five key areas: 

1. Community engagement: We encourage young people to understand how to maintain healthy relationships with family and friends, helping them to develop a support network as they work towards independence. 
2. Education, training, and employment: We work with young people to identify opportunities for professional development and potential career paths. 
3. Health and wellbeing: We support young people to understand their health needs and access services to support nutrition, sexual health, mental health, and substance misuse. 
4. Maximising income: We help young people apply for benefits, gain employment skills, and gain confidence in managing their finances. 
5. Safeguarding: We ensure our young people live in a safe environment and work with them to develop a risk assessment to help them manage risks in their lives. 

Our Approach

Outward young people’s services have adopted a trauma informed approach as it takes into account the needs of the individual upon referral, through to being housed and supported, to a successful move into appropriate longer term accommodation. This is done through resilience building and support from our staff who have regular trauma informed training. A trauma informed approach has been adopted as there has been a proven link between adverse childhood experiences and homelessness, as well as other complex needs issues such as difficulties forming relationships, depression and anxiety, substance misuse, criminality. This could be due to feelings of a lack of control, a sense of unpredictability, loss of safety and so on. Trauma is defined by the experience of the individual and not the event, with trauma affecting people in different ways.

We aim to provide robust support as well as building resilience within our young people in order to for them to lead a self-sufficient life and be able to deal with any challenges that life brings them and to be able to adequately navigate them. Outward’s Young People’s Service aims to prepare young people by implementing a psychologically informed environment which is sensitive to their emotional needs and helps them overcome barriers that were impeding their journey to independence. This requires our team to consider the thinking, emotions, personalities, behaviours, attachment styles, physical somatic experiences and past experiences of the young people living in our service and adapt the design and delivery of the service to meet their needs. Trauma informed training has also allowed our staff to gain a deeper insight into their own personal attitudes, beliefs and reaffirmed faith in our residents’ ability to grow and improve their situation.

Adopting a psychologically informed environment means that support workers are building therapeutic relationships with residents which involve being non-judgemental, validating people’s emotions and feelings, and helping them to create a safe environment. Staff ensure that our young people feel heard and seen and take time to understand past traumas that out residents have experiences and develop an understanding on how this may affect their boundaries, relationships with others and their sense of safety and identity.

Moving on 

We want to set our young adults up for success when they eventually move on to independent living. When the time comes, key workers hold sessions around independent living to ensure young people have all the skills they need to move on. The young person will also receive support to find suitable accommodation and understand their tenancy rights. 

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