Focus Groups

The Youth Apprentices supported by the Participant Development Worker at the NI Youth Forum, Amanda Stewart, engaged with leading providers of youth support across NI to facilitate focus groups with relevant young people. Attendees represented a mix of young people that had experienced homelessness and those that had not and indeed had little understanding of homelessness. • Action for Children, Omagh & Fermanagh (In person) • Ards & North Down Borough Youth Council (no experience of homelessness) • NIYF Amplify group, Ballymena (no experience of homelessness) • NI Housing Executive Youth Forum Group, Belfast • Include Youth ‘Give & Take’, Derry/Londonderry

Across the five sessions we welcomed 24 young people aged between 14 and 26 with youth leaders also in attendance and contributing to the conversations. Whilst we purposefully did not seek monitoring data there was a stronger female participation with 17 of the 24 participants, a mix of young people from urban and rural areas and those with lived experience and those with no direct experience of homelessness.

Focus groups were completed using a facilitated format that helped set the group at ease before they were asked to share their own experiences and feedback on:

What do you know?

Using an exercise, participants shared their thoughts on what makes a home in order to understand expectations and feelings towards homelessness. Homelessness

Facilitated discussion on what did and does homelessness mean to participants. Support

A series of questions were asked, to identify the sources of support used by participants, what barriers they experienced and where they received positive support in order to identify issues of accessibility, suitability, and quality of content available. Using persona cards participants were given an example of a young person (based on personas from the desk review process) and asked, ‘What would you advise this person to do?’