Human experience takes the lead on a research project spanning three faculties at MacEwan. Researchers from the Department of Child and Youth Care, the School of Social Work and the Department of Design have come together in service of a passion they share: helping youth in government care transition to adulthood. 

“Youth are often left on their own as they transition out of the system – and sometimes even before,” says Rebecca Stiller, assistant professor in the Department of Child and Youth Care. Stiller is one of four faculty members contributing to the Next Steps Life Digital Skills Project, which aims to provide a set of resources to help support at-risk youth aging out of government systems, such as the child welfare and foster care systems. 

The team of researchers recently sat down with Office of Research Services’ Research Recast(ed) podcast host Kelsie Johnston to talk about the many challenges young people face as they graduate from the system. A big part of the issue, explains Stiller, is that all resources are offered at once. 

“You need to know what you need to know when you need it. Not at some obscure time beforehand,” she says 

Faye Hamilton, an associate professor in the School of Social Work, says that’s one of the reasons for starting this work. “There are stories we both still hold of young people who we couldn't help in the way that we wanted. And I think this project is really for them,” she says. 

A youth advisory council, created with help from the research team’s two formal partners, Boyle Street Community Services and the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate, is helping uncover the specific challenges in accessing relevant, trustworthy information from sources that understand the youth’s unique lived experience, says Stiller.   

Because their unique experiences often include trauma, Hamilton explains, these youth are highly vulnerable to negative outcomes. “They are the least likely to go to post-secondary and graduate, and there's some data that shows 60 per cent of the youth experiencing houselessness have been in care.” 

Stiller adds that those challenges become stacked when youth experience additional, intersectional barriers, like being part of a racial or sexual minority. 

So the team is working to create resources on topics identified by the youth advisory council, including education, employment, healthy romantic relationships, how to be safe if you need to sleep on the street and how to advocate for yourself. 

But their focus is not only on what information they provide. 

For that work, the research office connected them with faculty members from the Department of Design, Dr. Isabelle Sperano, Jennifer Danko and Jimmy Lo, who focus on human-centred design, consulting end users before and throughout the design process. In this case, end users are those youth that Hamilton and Stiller have not only engaged but have also already built trusting relationships with. 

“We can do a lot of research about their experience, but to have them directly involved this way will lead to the greatest success,” says Danko. 

This method of participatory research – involving the people you are actually designing for in the research process – is something that all four members of the project believe in. 

“If it doesn't fit with what users are looking for, the tasks that they want to do or their needs, then it’s unusable,” says Sperano, who sees challenges as opportunities for learning.   

What they’ve heard from those involved is that a combination of websites, online learning modules and videos would work best. 

While the team recognizes that this type of research and engagement isn’t always easy or comfortable, they know it’s extremely necessary. 

“The participants we asked to be engaged citizens in our projects aren't necessarily used to this,” says Danko. “But when you put people at the centre – rather than the product or the outcome – it makes the depth of understanding have more meaning.” 

“We know it won't solve all the problems with the transition, but hopefully it will would be accessible, free of charge and created by young people who have this experience themselves so that the information is really meaningful,” says Stiller.

To learn more about all of this work, listen to the full episodes. Both are embedded below. 

Watch the full episode with Faye Hamilton and Rebecca Stiller

Watch the full episode with Jenn Danko and Dr. Isabelle Sperano