CHAT-YOUTH - Crisis Help and Assistance for youth during challenging Times

OVERVIEW
HELSINKI MEETING
NETWORKING AND COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE MEETINGS
PAST EVENTS
FUNDING AND PARTNERS

OVERVIEW

Youth undergo personal and external crises in the current time of changes. Young people seek support and mental help online. There are different kinds of online counselling chat services (OCCS) that aim to support the well-being of young people. CHAT-YOUTH will produce information and facilitate stakeholders to information exchange and ethical reflection to improve the quality of starting and ongoing non-profit OCCS and to capacitate youth work in Europe.

We collect and analyse data about characteristics and good practices of OCCS that support youth (<30) to overcome crisis with human help. In-depth analyses of topics and dialogues are conducted. The research results will be shared and disseminated through participatory activities with European stakeholders and further developed into practical tools. The aim is to facilitate networking that will strengthen the links between research, practice and policy.

CHAT-YOUTH will produce knowledge about OCCS that will help to develop and evaluate ongoing and start new OCCS. A special focus will be on vulnerable groups, including youth from Ukraine. Networking will bring European stakeholders together to share experiences and to discuss quality as well as ethical issues, also after the end of the project.

HELSINKI MEETING

We will have a meeting in Helsinki on the 22.8.2024 at Tieteiden talo (address: Kirkkokatu 6, 00170 Helsinki). The theme of the meeting is Research and Practice.

The preliminary program of the event:

Thursday, 22 August, 2024 Tieteiden talo, room 505 9 – 16 EEST (8 – 15 CET)
Time EEST	Subject	Presenter(s)
9.15 – 10.15	Welcome and Tour de table	Tuuli Pitkänen, Chat Youth, Project Leader, FYRS; Eila Kauppinen, Research Director, FYRS
10.20 – 10.55	Online counselling chat services for youth in Europe – results of the desk-review and qualitative interviews	Maria Cabello, Chat Youth WP2 Principal Investigator, Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), Spain
11.00 – 12.00	Work group discussion on these results – Important points from each group	Work groups
12.00 – 13.00	Lunch Buffet (13,50 eur) at Tieteiden talo
13.00 – 13.30	Comprehensive support for young people in changing societies: observations and experiences on the opportunities and challenges of online support?	Leena Suurpää, Director of the Youth Shelters, Finnish Red Cross; Adjunct Professor
13.30 – 13.40	Analyzes of chat discussions: suicide as online phenomena	Alix Helfer, Out of Despair -project; phd-student, FYRS
13.40 – 14.00	Analyzing large Chat discussion data sets – methods and preliminary results and discussion	Pyry Kantanen, Out of Despair – project; Data sciences, University of Turku
14.00 – 14.05	Group photo
14.15 – 15.30	Work groups: Research and practice: What kinds of research is needed Can chat services use the current results Practice Important points from each group	Work groups
15.30 – 16.00	Wrap up of the day Main points Steps forward – CoPs and Webinars	Alexis Dewaele, Chat Youth WP4 Principal Investigator, University of Gent, Belgium
	Voluntary program to facilitate networking
16.15-17.15	Guided walking tour in Helsinki (free for participants)	Starting from Kirkkokatu 6
19.00 –	Social dinner – location and price will be updated

Registration link for the Helsinki meeting: https://link.webropol.com/s/Helsinki22082024
We kindly ask you to register the latest on 15th of August 2024.

Welcome!

NETWORKING AND COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE MEETINGS

We focus on building a network of chat-related stakeholders, be it counselors, youth themselves, researchers or board members of chat-organizations. With this growing network we plan to organize six Community of Practice meetings, in which we want to enable European exchange of information about best practices and shortcomings in online chat counseling services for youth. The first Community of Practice meeting was a success and left us with much more to talk about.

The third Community of Practice meeting is planned on the 1st of October 2024 (11u – 12u30 CET). Anyone wishing to join us, can sign up using the following link (click here).

There after, future CoP meetings are planned on:

Tuesday February 11th, 2025 (11-12u30 CET)
Tuesday June 17th, 2025 (11-12u30 CET)
Tuesday September 16th, 2025 (11-12u30 CET).

Next to these CoP meetings we will also organize webinars on f.e. training of counselors. Specific dates are not picked yet, but the timeframes in which they will happen are listed below. Finally, we will also organize a Stakeholder symposium in Ghent (Belgium) on the 22^nd and 23th of May in 2025.

Webinar 1: November/December 2024
Webinar 2: May 2025 (parallel with symposium)
Stakeholder symposium: 22-23 May 2025
Webinar 3: November/December 2025

If you wish to learn more about the CoPs or the webinars, feel free to contact Elke Denayer (elke.denayer@ugent.be) with any questions or suggestions.

Dissemination aims to contribute to improving OCCS, and eventually support youth in need as well as youth work, research and policy making.

PAST EVENTS

Kick-off meeting for CHAT-YOUTH partners and experts
The hybrid kick-off meeting was arranged on Thursday the 25th of January 2024 in Madrid, Spain.

CHAT-YOUTH arranged a thematic working group called Do chat services for youth build hope? at the XXII Annual Conference of Youth Studies on 8–9th November 2023 in Helsinki, Finland.

NYRIS 16th Nordic Youth Research Symposium June 12-14th, 2024, Tampere, Finland. CHAT-YOUT arranged the thematic working group number 11. CHAT-services as Crisis help and Assistance for youth during challenging Times.

Past Community of practice meetings:

Community of Practice meeting on the 14th of March was about exchanging information and expertise. We gave a short update about the CHAT-YOUTH project and heard a presentation about a Finnish chat service.
Community of Practice meeting on the 18th of June was about artificial intelligence and how artificial intelligence can be used in chat services. Before we heard a presentation about AI, we gave a short update about the project. During the discussions participant shared their ideas and thoughts about using AI in the chat services.

picture of the people attending the kick off meeting in Madrid

FUNDING AND PARTNERS

ERASMUS+ KA220-YOU – Cooperation partnerships in youth.

Alexis Dewaele, Lien Goossens and Elke Denayer (1/2024 -), Universiteit Gent, Belgium
Maria Cabello Salmerón, Irati Higuera Lozano (3/2024 -) and Ana Mateos Ramirez (6/2024 -) La Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Katalin Felvinczi, Zsuza Kaló and Mónika Rényi (1/2024 -), Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
Tuuli Pitkänen, Essi Holopainen (9/2023 – 5/2024), Virvatuli Uusimäki (1/2024 -) and Siiri Soininvaara (8/2024 -), Finnish Youth Research Society, Finland