I didn't say no
What a Coaching Scenario is
Not quiz style. This is judgement practice — you're put inside a real situation from human-services work and asked what you would actually do. It draws on the knowledge you use on the job, not the kind you can look up.
Every choice changes what happens next, and every choice gets a coaching beat straight after it: what drew you toward that option, and how it played out. What's held back is the verdict on your path, so you stay with what you'd genuinely do rather than working out what you're supposed to say.
- 4 decisions
- Each one shaped by the one before it. No two paths through are the same.
- Coaching as you go
- A beat after every decision, naming the pull behind your choice and where it led.
- A full debrief
- Your whole path replayed at the end, with the reasoning behind each decision you made.
- Evidence you can keep
- A completed scenario is recorded in your PracticeLab and appears in your downloadable ProofKit.
Scenarios are made to be talked about. Most people finish one still turning it over, which makes them a ready-made prompt for supervision, a team meeting or a conversation with a colleague — everyone walks the same situation, and comparing where you each landed is often where the real learning happens.
This one ends with
Next time someone is making sense of something that happened to them, notice whether your first instinct is to explain — or to make space.
The situation
You are a youth worker at a drop-in centre. Paulina, a 17-year-old who has been coming to the centre for a few months, asks if she can talk to you privately. You find a quiet space and she tells you that a few weeks ago she had sexual contact with an older person she had been seeing — someone she knew through her social group, several years older than her.
Paulina looks at the floor as she speaks. She says: "I'm confused because I didn't say no, and we had been in a relationship, but I feel bad. Does that mean nothing happened? Like, is it still something if you didn't say no?"
You can see she is distressed. She is watching you carefully for your reaction — working out whether it's safe to keep talking. This moment is the beginning of how she makes sense of what happened to her, and how she understands herself in relation to it.
You know you will need to think carefully about what to say, how to handle any disclosure obligations, and how to stay present for her throughout this conversation.
What you're practising
Before you start, notice
Real-world decisions in scenarios like this are shaped as much by feeling as by reasoning. People often notice one of these pulls — naming what you feel before you decide is half the skill.
- The urge to reassure quickly — wanting to take her distress away before you've really heard it
- Uncertainty about consent — not feeling confident enough in your own understanding to speak clearly
- The pull to focus on the facts of what happened rather than how she's experiencing it right now
- Anxiety about mandatory reporting — and the urge to either jump to it immediately or avoid the topic altogether
Policies this draws on
- Your organisation's sexual harm response policy
- Your organisation's mandatory reporting procedure
- Your jurisdiction's child protection legislation
- Your organisation's confidentiality and privacy policy
- Your own organisation's policies take precedence — check them where they apply.
Heads up — coaching scenarios work differently. You'll make a sequence of decisions as the situation unfolds, and after each one you'll get a coaching beat: what drew you toward that choice, and how it played out. The one thing held back is the verdict on the path you took — that lands in the debrief at the end, with your whole walk replayed alongside it.
New to Good Practice Hub? Coaching Scenarios come with PracticeLab Pro, or browse the practice library to see what else is there.
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