Beneath the Canopy: Notes from the Field

Nature has therapeutic qualities of its own. Time outdoors can offer movement, sensory experience, challenge, curiosity, practical engagement and a change from the environments young people spend much of their time in. We value those things, and getting young people outdoors is an important part of why Canopy & Campfires exists.

But simply being in nature doesn't guarantee a particular outcome. Young people experience the same environment differently, and what is useful or meaningful for one may not be for another.

Our programmes therefore bring therapeutic and developmental principles and practice into the outdoor experience. They give the work purpose and direction, helping us decide how to use what the environment offers, how to introduce and support challenge, when to step in or back, and what might be useful to explore or build upon.

The woodland provides possibilities. How we work with those possibilities, and how they relate to the individual young person, is what turns time outdoors into a purposeful programme.

The practitioner is an active part of the programme. Our role isn't simply to provide activities, supervise the session or wait for development to happen. We are continually making judgements about pace, challenge, support, responsibility, communication and when to intervene or give more space.

How much support we provide can change considerably. At times we may lead, particularly when something is unfamiliar or greater structure is needed. From there we can support, facilitate, work in partnership and gradually step back as the young person becomes more familiar, capable and ready to take greater ownership.

That progression isn't fixed or one-way. A young person may manage something independently in familiar circumstances and need support again when novelty, uncertainty or greater challenge is introduced. They may also need more from us on a particular day because of how they arrive, without that taking anything away from what they have previously achieved.

Knowing when to step back matters as much as knowing when to step in. Independence shouldn't simply be produced by withdrawing support. We want it to become real rather than performed, with the young person increasingly carrying responsibility because they have the experience and capability to do so.

Practical activities and everyday camp tasks can work on several levels at once. Some are deliberately chosen for the opportunities they offer. Others simply need doing as part of the session. Often both are true, and an ordinary task can take on developmental significance through what happens while we are doing it.

Cooking lunch might simply mean that lunch needs making. It can also create opportunities for planning, decision-making and responsibility. Putting up shelter might be necessary because it's raining, while also presenting a useful challenge. What matters is that practitioners understand the possibilities within these activities without assuming that everything a young person does needs to carry a developmental purpose.

Having something purposeful to do can make engagement easier too. Hands and attention have somewhere to go, mentor and young person can work alongside one another, and conversation can happen without being demanded. Shared activity creates a very different dynamic from sitting opposite someone and expecting them to talk.

Activities also give us something real to observe and work with. Decision-making, confidence, frustration, problem-solving, help-seeking, persistence and initiative can become visible through what happens. How much involvement the practitioner provides can change according to what is needed.

As programmes develop, activities can develop with them. Familiar tasks can become more complex, carry greater responsibility, introduce novelty or be stress tested with less support. How a young person approaches the same or related experiences over time can contribute to our understanding of progress.

Activities can also provide real experiences to reflect upon, when reflection is useful. And as agency and ownership grow, something once suggested or organised by the practitioner may increasingly be initiated, planned and managed by the young person themselves.

Our programmes have purpose and structure, but they are not fixed programmes that every young person experiences in the same way. Activities, pace, challenge, communication, practitioner support and opportunities for reflection can all be adapted around the individual.

That adaptation continues throughout the programme. A young person may arrive ready to take on something difficult one week and need greater familiarity or support the next. They may engage through practical activity, conversation, exploration or a mixture of all three. As we get to know them, we can make increasingly informed decisions about what to introduce, what to revisit, where to challenge and where to give more space.

Individualised practice doesn't mean simply following whatever the young person wants to do. Practitioners still bring purpose, judgement and an understanding of what may be developmentally useful. Sometimes that means introducing novelty, encouraging someone towards a challenge they might otherwise avoid, or holding an appropriate boundary.

It also means responding to the young person who actually arrives that day, rather than rigidly delivering what was planned beforehand. A session can change direction without losing its purpose.

The working relationship is an important part of mentoring. It is a professional relationship with clear boundaries and purpose, but it isn't something separate that has to be established before the real work can begin. It develops through the work itself: spending time together, sharing experiences, solving problems, talking, laughing, managing difficulties and repeatedly turning up.

Trust develops in much the same way. A young person gets to know how the practitioner responds when they make a mistake, disagree, need help, become frustrated, change their mind or simply don't feel like talking. They learn whether we listen, whether we remember, whether we are consistent and whether a difficult moment changes how we respond to them next time.

At the same time, we are getting to know them. We learn more about how they communicate, what engages them, where they hesitate, what helps when things become difficult and when support is useful or gets in the way. That growing understanding helps us make better judgements about challenge, pace, responsibility and when to step forward or back.

As the working relationship develops, the young person may become more comfortable expressing opinions, disagreeing, asking for help, taking risks, showing uncertainty or simply being more themselves. This can open up possibilities within the work that weren't necessarily available at the beginning.

A working relationship cannot be forced. Some take longer to develop than others, and we can adapt how we work to give that connection time and space. We also need to recognise when it isn't developing sufficiently for the mentoring to be useful. Sometimes a particular mentor and young person are simply not the right fit, and being honest about that is part of responsible practice.

Giving a young person choices is useful, but choice and agency are not quite the same thing. Choosing between two activities still means choosing from options somebody else has provided. Agency develops when a young person has genuine influence over what happens.

That might mean suggesting an activity themselves, deciding how to approach something, changing a plan, saying no, asking to return to something from an earlier session or taking an idea in a direction we hadn't anticipated. The practitioner still holds responsibility for safety, boundaries and the purpose of the programme, but there can be considerable freedom within those boundaries.

Ownership can grow from this. A young person who initially waits to be shown what to do may begin making decisions, preparing equipment, identifying what needs doing or taking responsibility without being prompted. Over longer programmes, their interests, choices and ideas can increasingly influence the shape and direction of the work itself.

Challenge is an important part of our programmes, but simply making something difficult doesn't make it developmental. What matters is finding a level of challenge that asks something of the young person without making participation inaccessible.

That level is different for everyone. For one young person, challenge might mean using an unfamiliar tool or attempting a difficult practical task. For another, it could be making a decision, taking the lead, coping with a change of plan or continuing after something hasn't worked.

We don't remove the possibility of struggle. Getting stuck, making mistakes, feeling frustrated and having to rethink an approach can all be valuable parts of an experience. The practitioner judges when to support, when to offer a prompt, when to change something and when to leave enough space for the young person to work through the difficulty themselves.

Challenge can also come through real responsibility and real consequences. Tools need handling safely. A fire needs managing. Equipment needs looking after. Decisions can affect what happens next. Within appropriate boundaries, being trusted with something that genuinely matters can carry more weight than a task in which the responsibility is only symbolic.

As familiarity and capability develop, challenge can develop too. We can introduce greater novelty, uncertainty and responsibility, or reduce the amount of support available. This also gives us opportunities to see whether something that has become secure in familiar circumstances remains available when the conditions change.

Experience matters, but there is also value in having opportunities to make sense of it. Reflection can help a young person notice what happened, recognise what they did, consider how they responded and connect an experience with something they already know about themselves.

That doesn't mean stopping every activity to discuss its deeper meaning. Forced reflection can quickly become artificial, particularly when a young person isn't ready or doesn't naturally communicate that way. Sometimes the conversation happens while we're walking, cooking or packing away. Sometimes it emerges through humour or a passing comment. Sometimes we return to something much later, and sometimes there is no need to discuss it at all.

Practitioners need to judge when reflection might add something and when it would simply interrupt an experience that is already doing useful work. A successful challenge doesn't always need explaining. A young person may already know what it meant to them, or the significance may become clearer through what they choose to do next.

When reflection does emerge, it can help a young person understand more about their own experience. They might recognise how they approached something difficult, what helped, what they did when it went wrong, or something they hadn't previously noticed about themselves.

A standalone programme can achieve a great deal. Six sessions can provide new experiences, meaningful challenge, opportunities for reflection and enough continuity for a young person and practitioner to begin building useful work together. For some young people, that may be exactly what is needed.

When work continues, though, it shouldn't simply mean doing more of the same. Familiarity gives us something to build from. Activities and responsibilities can develop, practitioner support can change, and greater variety, novelty and challenge can be introduced. This gives us opportunities to stress test developing confidence, resilience, skills and independence rather than only seeing them in familiar circumstances.

Longitudinal work adds another dimension. Over a much longer period, the young person themselves changes, as do the circumstances around them. School, family life, relationships, interests, expectations and future plans may all shift. Periods of progress can sit alongside plateau, difficulty, regression and recovery.

The work changes with them. There are still concepts and developmental purposes behind what we do, but a longer programme cannot be mapped out in detail from the beginning. Its shape increasingly comes from the individual: what emerges, what becomes important, what needs revisiting, what they become ready for and where their own interests and direction begin to take the work.

Longer isn't automatically better. Continued support needs a reason. The question is not simply how long a young person has attended, but whether there is still useful developmental work to do.

Confidence, resilience and self-esteem are everywhere in work with young people. They appear in referrals, programme aims and intended outcomes so often that they can become little more than buzzwords. Saying that confidence has improved, for example, tells us very little on its own. Where? When? Doing what? Under what conditions? With how much support? And does it remain when novelty or difficulty is introduced?

We apply the same thinking to all three.

Confidence can involve willingness to try, but also decision-making, self-trust, initiative, communication, ownership and independence. A young person may be confident in one area and hesitant in another, so we look at where confidence appears, what supports it and whether it becomes more secure over time.

Resilience is more than persistence or simply pushing through. It can be seen in how a young person responds when something becomes difficult: adapting, problem-solving, accepting support, managing frustration, recovering and trying again. Sometimes the important development is not avoiding difficulty, but becoming better able to respond to it.

Self-esteem goes beyond praise or feeling good about a success. Experiences of genuine competence, contribution, trust, responsibility and increasing independence can give a young person something more substantial to draw upon. Over time, they build their own evidence of what they can do, rather than relying only on reassurance or praise from others.

The three overlap, and they won't necessarily develop evenly or at the same pace. What matters for one young person may look quite different for another.

Development rarely follows a steady upward path. A young person can make progress in one area while finding another more difficult, or demonstrate something confidently one week and struggle with it the next.

Context matters. Novelty, tiredness, changes at school or home, increased expectations, a difficult week or simply having less capacity on a particular day can all affect what a young person is able to bring to a session. Needing more support again doesn't necessarily mean that earlier development has disappeared.

This is one reason we look across sessions rather than judging progress from isolated moments. We may see periods of growth, plateau, difficulty and recovery. Something that appeared secure may be tested under different circumstances, while something that seemed to have disappeared may return when conditions change.

Recovery can itself be part of development. A setback may still be significant if the young person recovers more quickly, accepts support differently, re-engages sooner or approaches the same difficulty differently next time.

Progress doesn't always arrive as a major breakthrough. It can appear in relatively ordinary moments: starting without being prompted, making a decision more readily, asking for help, recovering after frustration, expressing an opinion, taking responsibility or attempting something that would previously have been avoided.

The significance of those moments depends on the individual. Doing something independently may represent substantial progress for one young person and be completely routine for another. The same behaviour can also mean different things depending on the circumstances, the level of challenge and how much support was involved.

Progress can also appear in how something happens. A young person may still become frustrated but recover more quickly. They may still need support but ask for it rather than disengaging. They may attempt the same challenge with greater willingness, tolerate uncertainty for longer or begin taking responsibility before being prompted.

This is why starting points matter. We aren't comparing young people with one another or with an imagined version of where they ought to be. We are interested in what is changing for that individual young person.

Progress is rarely captured by a single moment or behaviour. What we observe needs context: what came before, what was being asked of the young person, how much support was involved, whether something was familiar or new, and what else was happening at the time.

We also look beyond the obvious. Completing a difficult task may be significant, but so might asking for help, changing approach or recovering from frustration. An apparent setback can contain evidence of development if the young person responds differently than they once did.

Across sessions, we look for trajectories rather than isolated successes: what emerges, repeats, strengthens or fluctuates; what survives novelty and stress testing; what returns after difficulty; and what increasingly happens with less support.

We draw on different sources and perspectives too. Detailed session evidence, the young person's own words and actions, wider developmental analysis, practitioner reflection and relevant information from families or referrers can each contribute to our understanding. When different evidence points in the same direction, it strengthens the conclusions we can reasonably draw.

We remain careful about interpretation. We distinguish what we observed from what we infer, consider other explanations and don't assume every positive moment represents progress, or that a difficult period means development has stopped.

This is what sits behind the progress we report to schools, families and other referrers.

A diagnosis can give us useful information. It can help us understand needs, anticipate possible barriers and think about adjustments or support that might be helpful. But it cannot tell us everything we need to know about the individual young person.

Two young people with the same diagnosis can communicate differently, respond differently to challenge, have completely different interests and need very different kinds of support. We need to learn what works for the person in front of us rather than assume that a diagnostic label gives us the answer.

We are also careful not to interpret everything through diagnosis. Neurodivergent young people are still young people. They can be tired, excited, bored, worried, funny, frustrated, interested, uncertain or simply having a bad day. Not every behaviour needs to be understood as a feature of autism, ADHD or another diagnosis.

Most importantly, we want to know who they are. Their character, humour, interests, opinions, quirks, strengths, preferences and the things they care about all matter. Over time, we get to know the person who exists beyond the information contained in a referral or assessment.

That understanding matters to how we work with them. Support still needs to recognise their neurodivergence and any particular needs associated with it, but the programme is shaped around the young person themselves, not a version of them constructed from their diagnosis.