Home Fae Home: A case study in co-designing trauma-informed community spaces with young people in Dundee, Scotland

Background

Home Fae Home was an action research project, working with young people in Dundee, Scotland, to redesign the interior environment of a community-based youth work facility, through the lens of trauma-informed practice. Multi-disciplinary in nature, the project integrated the fields of psychology, architecture and spatial design with youth and community work.

Methods

Over 150 young people were engaged over 4 years in the co-design process through a range of creative workshops. As part of these workshops, a multi-methods approach to data collection was used, with semi-structured interviews and focus groups, as well as more creative and informal engagements.

Results

Spatially, the project has provided six new/additional diverse and adaptable youth work spaces, each thoughtfully designed by young people, to help them feel safe, process complex emotions, support recovery, avoid re-traumatization and reduce stress levels. Through the process, important new knowledge was also generated by the young people, highlighting the importance of expression and culture for adolescents and their need to have choice and ownership of their space.

Conclusions

The project clearly demonstrated that young people should be trusted as experts of their own experience of trauma and recovery and evidenced the crucial need for professionals who work with young people to deliberately redress power imbalances in order to facilitate this.