For practitioners
The First Meeting
A map in, before you knock.
Answer three short questions and a few ways to be introduced and welcomed into a young person's circle will appear below. Wariness is treated here as protective, not as resistance.
Before the visit
The introduction sets the tone
An introduction is not a formality.
A young person who meets a stranger with a title and a plan is being asked to trust someone they've never met, in a room they may not have chosen, at a moment they didn't arrange. Wary is the reasonable response. It's protective, and it's earned by experience.
The introduction is where you can shift that. Done properly — by someone the young person already knows, in their own words, in front of them — you arrive as a person attached to their world rather than an official arriving on top of it. When there's no one to do it, you make the introduction yourself, slowly, and you let it cost you something.
The questions below aren't about the purpose of the visit. They're about how you get in. Choose what fits the young person in front of you, not the ideal case.
How old is the young person?
Everything after this fits the age you choose.