Our mission is to ensure young people have the access to quality information, advice, counselling and support they need for their holistic development.
Our vision is that all young people know what it is to be valued and have the support and information they need to make a successful transition into adulthood.
Our values underpin everything we do. We apply them to staff, volunteers, young people, supporters, everyone we work with.
Values
Being Young Person Centred
We believe in being flexible and offering choice. We listen to and are led by a young person’s holistic needs. We advocate for a young person’s rights. We involve and work alongside young people. We develop new and innovative projects to ensure we meet the changing needs of young people. By listening to young people we can provide early action, preventing problems getting bigger and taking longer to solve.
Valuing Each Individual
We respect and celebrate the differences between people. We believe that each person has their own individual strengths, needs and unique experiences. We want people to express who they are, to be authentic. We value trust. We encourage staff and volunteers to work with passion and commitment. We believe that young people have talents and skills they can develop or build on.
Being Professional
We believe that young people should get the best support at the highest quality. We believe our staff and volunteers should be well trained and supported. We believe all our work should be based on best practice and established professional standards. We believe in reflective practice; learning from our experience. We measure and evaluate our outcomes and impact. We believe in being realistic and consistent.
Working for Social Justice
We believe that we have a wider social responsibility within our community. We work to inform and influence local and national health and social policy. We campaign with disadvantaged and marginalised young people. We believe in promoting rights and responsibilities and challenging prejudice and oppression. We work alongside young people to be agents of change for a fairer, more equal society. We support the UN Charter on Human Rights and The Rights of the Child and the European Convention on Human Rights.
We put our vision, mission and values into practice every day.
All our staff are approachable, friendly, well qualified and trained.
We provide everything under one roof, so you can access different types of support in one place. We are a part of a national network of charities supported by Youth Access to make sure everywhere has places like this for young people.
We work to high professional standards. We hold the Advice Quality Standard meaning our work is independently inspected. We also are registered with the Financial Conduct Authority so we can advise about debt. Our professionally qualified counsellors work to the standards set by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy. Our youth workers are professionally trained and overseen by the National Youth Agency.
A History of MAP
MAP opened its doors in 1991 in Norwich as Norfolk’s first Youth Information, Advice and Counselling centre. We started with a simple philosophy:
- To make our services as easy to access as possible – having everything in one place so that young people don’t have to repeat their story to lots of different people.
- To be led by young people – to respond to what they want and need, trust in their judgement and see them as a whole person with both needs and strengths.
Since 1991 we have grown and developed a lot. We now work across Norfolk and Waveney. We have youth workers as well as advisers and counsellors. As well as providing support, we work alongside young people to make change, such as campaigning on climate change or discrimination. We’re always learning and changing. We work for a world where young people have:
- Basic needs and rights met, such as housing, food or a job
- Good mental health
- A say over what is important to them
Whoever you are, whatever you need, we’re here for you.