The young people you work with, their issues and aspirations, should be at the centre of concern in your youth work. Finding out more about how they perceive your competence for the work you do with them is important for the authenticity and credibility of your self-assessment, whether you go through it as an individual, in a team or in an organisation. 
There are many ways to access input from the young people you work with. Some of them are part and parcel of regular youth work practice and involve different kinds of participatory evaluation methods. Nevertheless, for those of you who wish to include this dimension as part of your self-assessment process, it is worth thinking explicitly about how you can access input from the young people you work with.

Some useful possibilities include:

• Adding some questions to evaluate your (or your team’s or organisation’s) performance / competence in activity evaluations filled out by participants
   
• Group or one-on-one discussions with the participants of your activities about their experience of your work with them. For the credibility and legitimacy of this kind of discussion, and to be able to include transcripts or notes from these in your Portfolio as proof of competence, you should invite a colleague to attend and record the discussions. It is important to be as transparent as possible.
   
• Testimonies / direct statements by your participants about your work. These should be written, and in the first person but can be delivered anonymously if you think it is more appropriate.
   
• Asking one or more of the young people you work with to give you feedback on the Portfolio assessment you have prepared. Here you need to think carefully about the competence of the young people concerned. Again, for the sake of transparency, such conversations should be conducted with another colleague present, and documented.

You may feel embarrassed or insecure about asking your participants how they feel about your work directly. The participants may also feel insecure, not want to “hurt your feelings”, and self-censor what they say to your face. Even if this is the case, it is extremely important to do it. The Portfolio is a self-assessment tool, and it relies on a delicate balance of self-perception confronted with outside perceptions to provide a credible and legitimate evaluation. You can organise any of the above activities anonymously, if you think this kind of dynamic might change the way the young people interact with you. Technology opens a lot of avenues for receiving input anonymously.
If you are conducting a ‘team’ portfolio exercise, then ideally each member of the team would give feedback to and receive feedback from the whole team, whether individually or collectively, in addition to asking for feedback from at least one person “external” to the team. 

Think about some people you trust and who have direct experience of your work and performance in youth work. Who you choose, and how much of your self-assessment you discuss with them, is up to you. The important thing to remember is that the person or people must know your work well.

Getting feedback is an essential part of the Portfolio learning and development process. Without an “outside eye” on your self-assessment, it is difficult to “validate” it. In other words, it is difficult to show that it is more than your own personal opinion and, therefore, not biased or exaggerated.
It is up to you to choose the person or people who will provide feedback on your self- assessment. This checklist will help you make a decision about who to ask to provide feedback.

• The person knows you well in the youth work context in which you are active.
• The person is familiar with youth work concepts and practices in general and has, themselves, some experience of working with young people.
• The person has some experience of training, mentoring, counselling and/or providing professional feedback to colleagues.
• The person is willing to conduct the feedback process with you and act as your external validator in case you want to access the open badges method of certification for yourPortfolio, including all the tasks that this requires of them.
• The person is “well-seen” and “respected” by the wider youth work community of practice in which you both participate.
• The person is able to give you constructive criticism (i.e. independent, external, not necessarily a close friend, not your mum, etc.). 

Remember! You can use more than one person to provide feedback, and you may decide to have a different person to act as the critical friend for different parts of your self-assessment.

Feedback is a dynamic process that should go in two directions. Especially if you are using the Portfolio in a team or for organisational development purposes, the ‘giving feedback’ part of this dynamic will be just as important as the ‘receiving feedback’ part.