Young people’s participation in decisions affecting their lives needs a context.
It is not a one off isolated event.
What does their self-report assessment tell a young person about their personal journey?
‘I wasn’t going to go to my review. There was no point, nothing seemed to have changed during my time in care. Now, looking at this report, I can see how things have got better.’
Viewpoint child’s journey reports provide easily accessible ‘bigger picture’ and ‘distance travelled reports
A young person can see the key measures of their wellbeing:
- what’s going well,
- what their strengths are,
- how things have changed over time, and
- what it would be helpful to work on.
New goals can be set.
Literature supports the view that young people are able to provide self-information that is unique and has reliability as demonstrated by stability over time.
Children and young people are the only ones who can report (or at least confirm) their internal problems, such as loneliness or depression.
Ensuring that each self-report also provides a young person with information about their journey is important. It enables them to see what is improving and what still needs to change. It provides visual evidence to a young person, helping them see and believe that things can change for the better and so enhancing their self-esteem.
Self-esteem also comes from young people feeling competent, effective and accepted. Feeling competent is about young people believing and having evidence that they can achieve things. Healthy self-esteem affects everything a person thinks, feels and behaves. If a young person has low self-esteem, it can make them vulnerable to people pressuring them into things.
Child’s Journey reports can be set to display immediately on a child’s device – phone, tablet, or laptop. They display current and past responses with differences highlighted.
These reports can be configured to display with most Viewpoint questionnaires.