Italy Unibo COER - Mapping the context

1. Welcome/Overview

2. Introducing the case - "Mapping the context"

Dreamcatcher Project

First, you will read the description of the Dreamcatcher Project, a Counselling Center of LHS (Local Health Service) of Forlì working in adolescence field through an assets based approach. Through the interview transcriptions excerpts, we will describe the context analysis methodologies that Dreamcatcher operators put into practice in their context to keep in mind all the bonds that they have created with the community. The maps you can see attached in Section 3 - The Artefact ("Dreamcatcher Project Map" and "Network Adolescence Map"), will allow you to understand the network within the project and with the community. You can also see the video of the Dreamcatcher project that collects the narratives of the operators and users who describe the activities carried out and the atmosphere that is breathed inside the Counselling Center.

We will introduce you to the "Understanding Context: a look to the theory" presentation which will provide information about the different context analysis methodologies. Next, in Section 3 - The Artefact, we will introduce you to the “Mapping the Context Tool" which is based on mapping activities build on practice of the Dreamcatcher operators which you will use to analyse the Come Out Project we will present to you. You will be able to analyse the Come Out network and consider issues of connection within the territory and community resources. You will also be asked to consider the issues raised in relation to your own professional practice by answering a set of critical questions about the content of the COER.

Come Out Project

The Come Out project is an intervention by LHS of the city of Parma that was born with the aim to involve all community actors who, in different ways, are working with adolescence, to initiate a collective reflection on adolescents’ new needs, develop a shared understanding, as well as to empower all the actors by developing a shared approach in the interventions targeted to this population in the context of the local community.

More specifically, the goal of the “Come out” project is to develop a system which can detect, at an early stage, adolescents’ with emerging problems in the local community, by engaging the resources of different types of community actors, including those ones who are not health professionals (e.g. informal stakeholders).

Clicking on the hyperlinks below which will download a word document version of the Italian case study report and the online presentation "Understanding Context: a look to the theory".

  Click the link to download the pdf document

The description of Dreamcatcher Case Study

  Click the link to watch the presentation

Centro dascolto Acchiappasogni ING-2.0

  Click the link to watch the presentation

Understanding Context

  Click the link to download the pdf document

Understanding context: a look at the theory

  Click the link to watch the presentation

Mapping the Context Tool

3. The Artefact

In the COER you will find:

• The document with the case study and the Network Maps of the Dreamcatcher Project in Forlì, Italy. You can use this file to reflect on your responses to the critical question in section 5;
• Prezi presentation with "Mapping the context" Tool which has been provided for you to apply it to the "Come Out Case Study" (or can also use this tool to apply it to your own context);
• The document with Come Out Case Study.

The Italian Case Study Report, the Network Map of the Dreamcatcher Project and the Network Adolescence Map can be downloaded as PDFs. The Italian Dreamcatcher Case Study Report and the Italian Come Out Case Study Report case study report can be downloaded as a word document from the links provided below.

  Click the link to download the word document

Italian Dreamcatcher Case Study Report

  Click the link to download the word document

Italian Come Out Case Study Report

Click the link to download the pdf

Dreamcatcher Map

Click the link to download the pdf

Network Adolescence Map

4. The context of the artefact

The story behind the development of the Map

As described previously in the theoretical introduction, to carry out the context analysis you have at your disposal different qualitative and quantitative tools such as interviews (open, semi-structured and structured), focus groups, questionnaires, observation grids, etc. For example, during the analysis of the Dreamcatcher project network, we have chosen to use qualitative tools: a semi-structured interview and a focus group. Following the preliminary data collection, we learned about the periodic meetings that the Dreamcatcher team organised with the members of the Adolescent Network to map the resources and links present in the community. The need to have a general framework that could clarify numerous links and complex partnerships that the operators who participated in the interviews had told us, emerged from the data collected. This gave rise to the idea of asking the operators to draw the illustrative map of the network that the project established with the community. The question, used as an "icebreaker" game at the beginning of a focus group, was formulated as follows: "During the previous interviews, many stories emerged describing your work network within this community. A network that seems to be very complex and for this, I ask you to help me to shape this network by creating a map together using paper and pen. Think of all the actors involved in your projects, or the links with the professionals and with the entities present in this area". At the end of the session, the usefulness perceived by the participants regarding the activity of creating the map emerged (proved effective not only for our analysis). In a certain sense the request to make their network graphic, so that it could be clear and usable in the eyes of the interviewer, has activated in the participants a meta cognitive process with respect to their network. The participants were able to reflect on their connections with the territory, they were able to "see" making the resources present in the community tangible. Through the group process, new nodes and new bridges have emerged within the network that was not previously perceived so clearly. This experience gave rise to the idea of creating an artifact based on the network maps of two Italian projects.

Why the map as an Assets Based Artefact

The network map is an easy-to-use tool that can be used individually by operators, but which leads to better results if used in groups (with the professional team for example). It gives operators the opportunity to reflect on the network work they carry out; the links that they have created over the years and how they have managed to bring them forward to the possible partnerships to be set up. Not only that, when you recognise the nodes of the network, you can also deepen its functions by asking: 

• Are there nodes that inform with respect to specific activities? 
  
• Are there partners who support the project on a financial level? 
  
• Do they actively collaborate in its implementation? 
  

This map, therefore, makes it possible to make visible the numerous connections and to enhance the resources and potentials present in the reference context (the community) through a methodology consistent with the asset based approach.

Why the “Dreamcatcher” perspective link to an Assets Based Approach

The Project “Adolescence” (“Progetto Adolescenza”), approved in 2013, identifies a specific approach that has been outlined in regional guidelines offered to professionals, educators and other figures working with teenagers. The project focuses on adolescents and on the local networks between services, institutions and people that work with adolescents in the whole regional area (including already existing networks, that need be strengthened, or new ones); the main aim of the project is to create an intersectoral integration among different services (health, educational and social) active in the local communities, following common guidelines to promote adolescents welfare and wellbeing. To reach this aim, “Adolescence Project” also provides support for families and parents, and recognises them as key stakeholders of the local community. The findings from the project indicate that in order to promote adolescents’ well-being a community that cares about young people and is able to collaborate is needed. Thus, strengthening partnership and community building are key methodologies through which the project operates both at the local level and at the regional level.

The guidelines "Well-being promotion and risk prevention in adolescence: The project adolescence" (Regional guidelines, 2013) underline the importance of an approach based on proximity and flexibility in working with adolescents. They have been promoted and supported in their approval by the Department of Health Policies and the Department of Social Policies.

The approach of the Regional service is coherent with assets-based approaches, as it focuses on raising awareness on adolescents as a resource for the whole community; peer education is a typical approach used in the regional context to empower young people, allowing them to discover their competencies and skills and value them as useful and precious for the entire community. This approach modifies the roles and the relationships between “users” and “providers”. Active methods to involve young people and community members in the planning and implementation of projects and/or interventions are supported. Active participation in the creation of projects let adolescents and the community itself identify their abilities and skills and use them to increase community well-being.

The “Dreamcatcher” project has embraced regional guidelines and has found a clinical theoretical framework in the reflections of some important adolescent experts (e.g. Charmet, Recalcati), who underlined the complexity of this evolutionary phase, which brings with it not only the typical changes in puberty, but also those imposed by society, and emerging from new needs for young people:

"It changes the perception of the world around and within itself ... The emotions multiply, complicate and everything, between discoveries, adventures, pitfalls seems confused. To understand the teenagers today is not enough to rely on their own experience, society has profoundly changed, teenagers grow in the shadow of strong narcissistic and consumerist ideals and, therefore, risk becoming disillusioned by the expectations set in becoming bigger. Parents are in trouble, though, with respect to previous generations, they set up less conflicting relationships with their children" (Charmet, 2005).

"Today, the evolutionary scissors increasingly distance between puberty and adolescence: puberty seems to impose new precocity - girls and 10-11-year-olds behave like real teenagers - while adolescence seems to never end. This phase-out is indicative of a profound contradiction that makes the untenable condition of our youth. On the one hand they are thrown with great anticipation over their mental age into a world full of information, knowledge, feelings, and opportunities to meet, but on the other hand, they are left alone by adults in their training course. No age like ours has known individual and mass freedom as our young people experience. But this new freedom does not match any promise about the future. The old generation has deserted its educational role and has given young people a mutilated freedom. The alluring offer of ever-new sensations has multiplied almost to the dramatic absence of prospects in life. Here is the portrait of the new discomfort of youth: our children are exposed to a continual bombardment of stimulation and, on the other hand, adults overlook the educational task" (Recalcati, 2011).

It is clear that the project uses an Asset Based Approach to implement its actions through a well-structured network with their stakeholder that actively participates sharing community resources.

5. Critical Questions

Answer the following critical questions and record your answers in your Individual wiki space. Use the information you have read about Dreamcatcher Project and the tool structure to help you think about and answer the following questions:

1. In the analysis of a context, do you think that considering all levels of observation of a system will be useful in your professional practice?
2. With respect to the context mapping tool, how do you think that this methodology will help you in your professional practice?
3. What opportunities does this tool offer?
4. How could it be applied in your context?
   
5. What do you think are the resources offered by your context?
   

               Click the link to complete your Individual Wiki

Individual Wiki

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6. Sharing implications for Professional Practice

Use the Group wiki collaborative class space to share how you might apply what you have learned to your professional practice. Then, we ask you to apply the tool in your own context, at your place of work working in a team, or with your formation class, or with your fellow students taking this COER.

Click the link to complete your Group Wiki

Group Wiki

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7. Comparing International practice/academic perspectives

Here you can find videos of Come Out psychologist and University of Bologna professors talking about what the critical questions meant for them.

Now you have to compare the answers you gave in your Individual wiki and the reflections and experiences recorded in the Group wiki collaborative class space, first to the answers given by the practitioners to the same critical and reflective questions. Second, to compare their answers to other international perspectives and academics answering the same critical questions.

Click on the hyperlinks to download a word document version of the answers given by the practitioners and psychologists from the Dreamcatcher and Come Out Case studies.

  Click the link to download the pdf document

Dreamcatcher answers to the critical questions

  Click the link to download the pdf document

Come Out answers to the critical questions

Compare your Individual and Group Wiki answers to the practitioners answers

Individual Wiki

Group Wiki

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8. Bringing it all together

Now we ask you to return to the “Critical Questions” in your learning journey (Individual wiki) and the reflections of the practitioners and academics to determine what aspects of an asset-based approach and the challenges identified in the research does this exemplify. Answer the following questions:

1. In what ways are the answers you gave similar to that of the practitioners?
2. How do the answers your group gave differ from that of other international practitioners?
3. In what ways are the answers you gave similar to that of the academic responses?
4. Question about connecting theory to practice to be developed once module level LO are clearer.

                 Click the link to complete your Group Wiki

Group Wiki

                          Comment

9. Summary

In the previous sections, you will have learned how the context is an element not negligible in our daily life or in our work because through it we can explain the behavior of the people around us. You will have learned the qualitative and quantitative tools through which to analyze the context that surrounds you, practicing with a few small examples individually or in groups. You will have learned about an Italian organization that uses an asset-based approach and how they use their resources in the territory. You will have developed your analytical thinking skills through the use of critical questions, thoughtful thinking and writing to reflect and understand your context and its different levels of observation and analysis. By completing this resource, you learned how the context is the element that unites the person with the society, influencing each other.

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10. References