Every young person has the right to non-discriminatory services

These are the experiences of far too many young people when life gets hard.  Various studies and our own occupational experiences show that the threshold for seeking and receiving help is high for many young people even when they feel they need it. Staying silent or coping on your own should not be the solution to the difficult situation in life of any young person.

“A child or a young person seeking help should not be grilled, questioned or blamed”

The right to receive non-discriminatory support is not realised equally among all young people in Finland. The Youth Barometer (2020) shows that nearly a fifth of young people who feel they belong to more than one minority have experienced prejudice and discrimination in many services.

This is a serious message from young people who can also otherwise be in a particularly vulnerable or marginalised position in our society. The discrimination experienced in various services by these young people is several times higher than that experienced by young people in general. These young people are forced to face structural racism in situations where their capacity to seek help can be non-existent and their faith in receiving reliable aid is crumbled.

Minority stress means a feeling of mental burden, inferiority or injustice caused by experiences or fear of discrimination . Minority stress is often both an individual and an inter-generational experience. Young Roma, for example, share the experience of feeling like an outsider with their parents and grandparents, and this experience shapes their self-image and how unsafe they perceive services to be. Time and again, the young person must be careful not to prop up the stereotypical interpretation of the Roma people or be seen as a “difficult customer” within a white normative service system. Structural racism can be revealed by the young person’s feeling that the services are not meant for people like them.

“I was not sure whether they would understand my experiences or take them seriously. I don’t have the energy to get into a debate about it.”

The quote in the heading describes a situation where a young person did not contact mental health services for students as they did not find any mention of racism or discrimination on their website. The young person’s conclusion was that the experiences of racism behind their anxiety were not a justified reason for seeking help.  

To be safe for young people, it is not enough that services have tacit knowledge of racism. Anti-racism must be seen and heard in the communications of those services. Professionals who meet young people must show that discrimination and racism are real and acknowledged problems in our society and that help is available for dealing with them. Each young person must be able to trust that their experience is heard and taken seriously and that they will receive professional support for processing their experiences of racism. This is the only way to break the inter-generational experience of minority stress and the experience of racism as a young person’s personal problem and own fault.

“Every young person has the right to define or not to define themselves.”

Every young person has the right to receive help. Discussions about this right often focus on whether the young person can receive services near where they live or what kind of queues there are for these services. In addition to the availability of services, it is important to assess how accessible and acceptable they are. Accessibility means that the service does not discriminate and that physical barriers, cultural and knowledge-based factors or unfair power structures do not restrict a young person’s right to access support.

The above quotes reveal that simply offering services does not make them equal nor non-discriminatory. Accessibility also means acceptability. This requires that the person offering support must have the skills and sensibilities for understanding young people’s lives at their terms and non-discriminatory and anti-racist awareness, attitude and approach to work. Services are acceptable for young people when they can trust that the encounter and aid is appreciative, reliable and safe.

Recognising and discussing racism is also linked to the tragedy in Ukraine and how to process it with children and young people. People working with children and young people have received active guidance on how to process the fears and worries caused by the war together with children and young people. The same kind of commitment is required in bringing up the subject of racism and processing it jointly across different generations.

Authors:

Leif Hagert is the Chair of the Finnish Roma Youth Council and the Finnish Roma Association

Anne-Mari Souto is a university lecturer and researcher at the University of Eastern Finland

Leena Suurpää is the manager of Finnish Red Cross Youth Shelters

The quotes are taken from the Youth Shelter Digiraati discussions and Anne-Mari Souto’s research.