Involve '04
Report by Kori Bragg
|
Abstract
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Adolescent Health &
Development Conference
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| Keywords: |
Youth, conference.
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The
Waipuna Conference Centre in Mount Wellington Auckland hosted the 7th
Biennial,and the 3rd Australia-New Zealand Adolescent Health and
Development
Conference, between the 20th and 22nd September 2004. Father
and Child Trust’s Teenage Dads Project support worker Kori
Bragg was there, and filed this
report…
I
was fortunate enough to be invited to the “Involve ‘04” conference in
Auckland
this year, and I was unsure of what to expect especially after
attending the
Public Health
Conference
in Christchurch earlier this year.
After
arriving at the conference centre I was overwhelmed by the amount of
young
people attending the conference and even more so when I realized that
all these
young people are
working
with youth.
The
“Involve” conference is held every
year, and every second year in Australia.
The main theme for this years conference was making connections
between
youth, families and
their
communities and a strong focus on networking with
various youth organisations to discuss issues and share ideas.
On
the first day they had arranged a scavenger hunt which involved about
15 youth
who went out for the day visiting GP’s, counsellors, and other various
health
professionals. 
They
were then each given
different role-playing scenarios regarding youth issues. After this
they
approached these
health
professionals and were asked to rate them out of 10 (with ten being
excellent) on how they
felt about
approaching them, and whether they were comfortable talking to them
and how helpful they were. The results were mixed
as these young
people spoke
about their experiences that day, some commented that they had found
staff to
be very
helpful and easy
to talk to and others said they were made to feel bad about their
situation. Those results alone show there
is a long way to go in
bridging the gap between youth and health providers. The input we were
given
from the young
people themselves
was priceless, and just as we had found in the
teen dads survey, these young people had rated someone
to talk
to
as paramount
over everything else. If this wasn’t easily accessible, they felt
reluctant to
seek help for their
situation. There
were so many workshops to chose from and many of them offered unique
insights
on how to engage youth with peer support workers and mentors. This is
very
popular amongst
the young people today, especially when the youth and support
workers are closer in age, as they felt it made it easier for them to
talk to
and relate to. I facilitated
an open
space
discussion on the Teen Dads Survey
results, which sparked many questions and suggestions from the
audience, where
we even had a gentleman from Australia.
While many
of the challenges are still
large, people’s attitudes were very positive which was great for us, as
the
“Berlin wall” of negative attitudes and stereotypes is slowly but
surely crumbling.
I received many positive comments regarding the Trust and the
survey. Some of the groups attending the conference included the
Youthline
crew, Yellow
Ribbon, Ministry
of youth Development.,
and
various other youth workers across the
country. I was most impressed with the
energy and passion that many people projected in
their work which
was reflected
by everyone attending the conference which made it a very enjoyable
experience For more information on
Involve04 log on to
www.Involve04.org.nz, or contact
this office for a copy of
the programme.