Chairs:
Tuuli Pitkänen (Finnish Youth Research Society)
Alexis Dewaele (Ghent University, Belgium)
Wednesday Nov 8th 2023 at 14.30–17.15 (hybrid)
Youth undergo personal and external crises and many young people seek support and mental help online. There are different kinds of online chat counselling services (OCCS) available, however, little research has been conducted on these services yet. The aim of this working group is to share and discuss the existing research results. A special focus will be on youth perspective and on vulnerable groups.
The objective of the workshop is to promote networking and share information about the experiences of the young people, the discussed chat topics, good practices and the characteristics of OCCS that aim to support youth (< 30) to overcome crisis with voluntary or professional human help. Also, quality and ethical issues will be discussed, as well as questions such as, How OCCS are linked to other public or non-profit social and health care services? Do OCCS build hope? What is the future of OCCS? And possibly experiences of the services for youth from Ukraine will be shared. This is an international working group, and thus all presentations and discussion are in English.
The working group is organized by a recently started ERASMUS+ project called CHAT-YOUTH – Crisis Help and Assistance for youth during challenging Times that aims to facilitate networking of researchers and strengthen the links between research, practice and policy. CHAT-YOUTH will collect and produce research 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. CHAT-YOUTH project is funded by ERASMUS+ KA220-YOU – Cooperation partnerships in youth.
Identifying and assessing of online synchronous chat counselling services for youth in Europe
Maria Cabello (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, ISCIII, CIBERSAM, Spain)
Alexis Dewaele (Universiteit Gent, Belgium)
Felvinczi Katalin (Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, Hungary)
Lien Goossens (Universiteit Gent, Belgium)
Essi Holopainen (Finnish Youth Research Society, Finland)
Tuuli Pitkänen (Finnish Youth Research Society, Finland)
Background: This study is part of the action called CHAT-YOUTH designed to coordinate the existing expertise in partners from four European countries (Spain, Finland, Belgium, and Hungary) for documenting the use and characteristics of the main online chat counselling services (OCCS) aimed at providing psychosocial support in youth aged 12–30 years in Europe. Methods: The four participating countries will conduct a mixed method study, including a mapping of the main existing services in their respective countries and conducting a set of qualitative interviews with the professionals attending/in charge of OCCS to finally collect the main characteristics of these services. The number of participants vary according to the existing services identified for each country but at least 20 interviews will be conducted. A standardized topic guide, including open-ended questions for qualitative interviews will be designed together with a case record form to document organization and interviewed characteristics. Results: A description of OCCS characteristics, and of their users will be reported. Discussion: A final report with recommendations, unmet needs and best practices will be released.
Online chat services targeting/used by young people in Hungary
Zsuzsa Kalo (Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, Hungary)
Katalin Felvinczi (Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, Hungary)
Kék Vonal (Blue Line) is the only fully operating chat helpline for teenagers in Hungary. This telephone and chat helpline helps approximately 30 thousand teenagers yearly. This study examines the evolution and growth of chat helpline tailored to meet the unique needs of Hungarian adolescents. It dvelves into the specific issues that teenagers face in the Hungarian context, such as mental health struggles, academic pressure, peer relationships, and substance abuse. The research also explores the ways in which these helplines are designed and operated to ensure accessibility, anonymity, and trustworthiness, factors that are paramount to engaging and helping teenagers.
Co-production of knowledge by young Ukrainian immigrants in Finland
Arseniy Svynarenko (Finnish Youth Research Society, DECA STN project)
Within the context of a broader discussion on epistemic rights and migration, this paper will examine epistemic capabilities of young Ukrainian immigrants in Finland through the prism of their communication practices. These practices reflect the aspects of young immigrants access to information, access communication technologies and platforms, media culture and literacy, as well as immigration narratives. Recent studies in Ukraine demonstrated that for 18-29-year-old Ukrainians the top-2 sources of news are social media channels (for 87%) and friends/relatives (36%) – these essentially interactive channels that tend to form “information bubbles” (OPORA, 2022). The social media channels are characterised by: accessibility (broad-band Internet infrastructure and smartphones), interaction (reactions to posts, forwarding materials, commenting etc), and easiness of (co-)producing the information (creating own media channels, producing media content). For young Ukrainians, the most commonly used social medias include the essentially messenger/chat-style platforms (Telelgram, Viber) as well as platforms for user-generated visual content – YouTube and Instagram.
Participants of the study in Finland highlighted the importance interactive element consumption on information, including the interaction with producers of information and audiences. Accessing various kind of services often include the chats (over website, a messaging app or email) with social workers, medical and other personnel of various organisations. In the multilingual environment where young immigrants live, this interaction is often mediated by translation apps, adding another layer of complexity. Accessibility of information and ability to exchange/co-produce the knowledge in the native language is one of important factors for building the trust between the involved parties.
How Online Chat Counselling Services build hope for young people with intimate relationship concerns
Essi Holopainen (Finnish Youth Research Society)
Online counselling in various electronic mental (e-mental) health services has become widely popular and needed intervention among young people. Relationship problems are recognised as one of the main reasons why young people access these services, however further research is needed about the services’ abilities to support young people with these concerns. In this presentation, I will sum up the need to take a closer look on relationship-based emotional suffering and feelings of hopelessness while investigating supportive online counselling frameworks. The research data consists of chat dialogues from Mental chat service and is analysed using qualitative content analysis and frame analysis. The data includes theme-related chat conversations between the professionals or educated volunteers and young people aged 18–29, who have reported their age and gender as well as having negative emotions while entering the discussion. The preliminary results will be presented in this work group.
When the highest service threshold is the one on the home door – how the youth perceive their parent`s support in seeking help
Janne Takala (A-Clinic Foundation)
Tuuli Pitkänen (Finnish Youth Research Society)
The article explores how the youth experience the support of parents in getting help from services. The perceived attitudes and expected reactions of parents have negative effects on young people`s willingness and ability to seek and receive professional help for their psychosocial issues. The main outtake is the thematic summary of the ways that young people protect themselves and their parents with their choices in help seeking. The analysis is based on an analysis of 622 discussions conducted in Mental Chat. Mental Chat (Sekasin in Finnish) is a popular low threshold online service in Finland providing young people counselling on matters entirely up to their own decision.