• When reporting on young people supported by Step by Step, or reporting on our work as a whole, we have a few recommendations to support you.

A few do / don’ts

In line with our Accredited Thriving Foyer status mark and membership of the Foyer Federation, we have adopted an asset based approach to our work with young people. What this means in practice is that, while we will assess risk and provide support that minimises risk and harm, our focus is on what a young person has as opposed to what they are lacking. In line with this, we choose person first and asset focused language.

Do:

• Refer to young people rather than problems, issues, or acronyms; eg young people experiencing homelessness as opposed to “the homeless”, young people experiencing unemployment as opposed to “unemployed youth”, “NEETS”.
• Write positively about young people and their achievements and aspirations.

Don’t:

• Depersonalise or dehumanise by referring to groups of young people as “the homeless” or “the unemployed”. We focus on the person and what they’re working towards or what they’ve achieved.
• Focus on problems or issues, instead focus on how the young person (or the charity) is working towards overcoming obstacles in their life.

Our Brand Guidelines can be downloaded from the sidebar.

To be supplied with logo files in the approproiate file format for your use, please email fundraising@stepbystep.org.uk where one of our team will be happy to help you.

To help people who are presenting on behalf of Step by Step, we have put together a guide which covers:

• Our Approach
• Our Vision
• The Need for our services
• The Difference these services make to young people
• Quotes and Case Studies from young people
• Our Voice.

The guide is available to download in the sidebar.