Adolescent Tightrope toolkit, videos and extras

Want to engage young people in open discussions about their circumstances and future goals?

Regardless of a young person’s presenting needs the Adolescent Tightrope offers a holistic approach in practice

Supporting current approaches of trauma informed practice, Signs of Safety®, GoodLives, Desistance Theory and Motivational Interviewing the toolkit is based on an analogy that being a teenager and moving into adulthood can be like walking on a Tightrope and supports an open discussion to reflect on key areas within assessments and plans:

• Central values – the intentions and motives of past or future behaviour
• What might falling off look like – the behavior we are worried might happen in the future
• Future goals and aspirations
• Protective foundations – times of success and exceptions to harm that keep the foundation under the tightrope stable
• Muddy Path – experiences in the past that makes things more wobbly now
• Balancing Strengths – individual strengths to help manage the situation
• Steps up – current worries or complicating factors making the risk (ladder) higher
• Safety Net – those who support and help now
• Steps Down – actions needed / planning for future goals and safe ground

Download Adolescent Tightrope

The latest version was uploaded 22 January 22

Evidence based direct work tool

The toolkit is drawn from research on adolescent risks (youth offending, self-harm, substance misuse and exploitation) and research on resilience and social capital. The toolkit includes:

• an introduction to the analogy and how it can be applied to assess risk and resilience
• outlines the changes that occur during adolescence and the impact of trauma on development
• provides templates to record a summary of your assessment with an outline of the various models that support or align with the model
• suggestions for questions to ask and prompt cards that you can print and cut out to use in direct work (the set of cards can be downloaded below)
• each prompt card is supported by references to show why that factor was included
• guidance to practitioners about the role of the worker, factors to consider in application and how to evaluate progress or impact of the tool
• a full list of references are provided

Reviews - from practitioners

“I got more in that tightrope in one session than I’d done in 10 weeks working with the young person”
Wandsworth Locality Youth Work Manager (working with CSE and gangs)

“[Young people] have been able to identify intentions and motivations which they hadn’t previously.”
Practitioner in Lambeth Youth Offending Service

“[Young people] can see what’s going wrong and the patterns…They can identify better choices…It’s visual and they get it.”
Feedback from young people and workers in Wandsworth

“What a can of worms (information) in 10 years I have not managed to gain so much info in one session using such an effective assessment tool. Wow…..”
Bail and Remand Officer in Hammersmith and Fulham

Download Printable cards

The cards in the guidance workbook can be printed from the workbook or collectively from here so you can print off, cut out and laminate each card, or page of cards. There are also mats that have all the cards from each area together.

Hardcopy toolkit

If you or your team want the hardcopy toolkit with 8 sets of printed cards and two printed pads with the template form to complete, then a few sets are still available to purchase from here.

Extras

Tightrope doodle summary - for young people

This video provides a summary of the Tightrope for young people

Adolescent Brain Development - and how to respond with trauma informed practice

When training workers on the tightrope and Adolescent Development, I will refer to Emotional Development, Trauma Informed Practice and Tranactional Analysis. I will provide the following worksheet and ask workers to look at the behaviours on the far right column and consider if they have seen these in the adolescents or adults they are working with. The behaviours correspond to an emotional age and to a developmental stage of needing to learn certain scripts in regard to feeling wanted, loved, safe and good enough. The far right column provides statements from Transactional Analysis that are powerful ways to connect and calm another’s overwhelm. Emotional Development Worksheet

The following video provides a more detailed doodle summary about adolescent development and how to respond using emotional development and transactional analysis theories in practice

Out of court format

For Youth Justice practitioners an Out of Court Disposal template has been created and is available here: OOCD Screening Template 2019.pdf

Workbook for parents

The original use of the tightrope analogy was with parents whose children were open to the Youth Justice service. Using research about supporting parents of adolescents, a basic homemade workbook was created called the Circus Act that supports parents to work through exercises that are based on the circus:

• balancing act, which uses the tightrope analogy and explores the young person’s strengths and how the parent provides a safety net that is not too lose or too tight
• backstage - chronology direct work tool that recognises that the young person and parent may have different perceptions about the same family experiences
• hall of mirrors to understand the parent’s own experiences of being parented
• jugglig act to identify the number of tasks and responsibilities the parent is having to juggle and what they could let go
• seal act to understand what stress and pressure the young person is faced with
• lion tamer to support boundaries and rule setting, with negotiation
• knife throwing to support fair and balanced arguments
• Magicians tricks, the magic wand of parenting - having fun and special time with their child

For more information email: [email protected]

“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.” Maya Angelou