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.