When Helping Gets in the Way: What the Outdoors Makes Possible
Outdoor programs are often described as naturally engaging, therapeutic or transformative. Yet being outside does not automatically create participation, safety or meaningful change. Outdoor experiences can reproduce the same adult agendas found in classrooms, services and other institutional settings: predetermined outcomes, tightly managed activities, compulsory reflection and pressure to demonstrate growth.
This presentation explores what the outdoors can make possible when practitioners loosen their grip on the planned outcome without abandoning safety, boundaries or duty of care. Drawing on adventure therapy, youth work and relational practice, it argues that the value of outdoor work is not simply found in challenge, risk or activity. It is found in the different conditions the outdoors can create for relationship, agency and participation.
Using a Fun, Safe, Useful practitioner check in, the presentation examines how practitioners can notice adult agenda, respond to young people’s feedback and adapt experiences in the moment. It also challenges the assumption that every activity requires a formal debrief, suggesting that meaning is more likely to emerge through relationship than through forced reflection.
Ultimately, the outdoors does not transform young people. It creates possibilities. What happens next depends largely on what adults do with the power they hold.
About the Presenter
Doug Moczynski works therapeutically with young people and families and tries to inspire other grown-ups to do the same.
His career began in the outdoors, where he developed technical skills across a suspicious number of adventure activities and became something of a Swiss Army knife of outdoor facilitation; although usually with an actual bush knife, a PFD whistle and a risk assessment close at hand.
For almost two decades, Doug has worked across outdoor education, youth work, out-of-home care, leaving care, disability, youth justice, family violence and therapeutic services. This includes 12.5 years coordinating wilderness programs for young people with complex trauma histories and five years running Gippsland Adventure Therapy, a service supporting young people and families to connect, heal and share some joy through adventure.
Doug now works in the family violence sector, bringing a relational, trauma-aware and accountability-focused lens to work with adults, young people and families.
His practice blends relational youth work, trauma-aware care, outdoor facilitation and Feedback-Informed Treatment. He is currently completing a Bachelor of Social Work and continues exploring how outdoor spaces can create more room for agency, connection and meaningful participation.
He remains deeply committed to the radical idea that young people are more likely to engage when adults are interesting, trustworthy and willing to loosen their grip on the plan.
