December 05, 2016
|By aissagallie
|
Foundation’s Children and Young People’s Therapeutic Service was asked by North Yorkshire County Council to write two eight week courses that would improve the resilience, confidence and self-esteem of children and young people affected by domestic abuse. These courses were based on the Expect Respect pack provided by Women’s Aid and included lots of creative and fun activities to increase the participants’ engagement. The courses were to be delivered by Prevention Service workers in North Yorkshire and the programme was called ‘Create Confidence’.
The Prevention Workers were trained to deliver the ‘Create Confidence’ programmes so that they would then be able to train their own colleagues. On the training course they explored how to identify when someone may be vulnerable to domestic abuse, how to implement the creative interventions, the reasons why creative interventions are effective and when to raise concerns when someone might be at risk.
The four cohorts of Prevention workers coming from all areas of North Yorkshire have now been trained in Scarborough, Northallerton, Harrogate and Selby and some have begun to deliver the ‘Create Confidence’ programme to young people.
Here is what one of the course participants wrote to tell us:
The feedback from the young people that we are working with is that they are really enjoying the course and they also express in the evaluations that they are having fun. We have found that the course material is good to follow, doesn’t need adapting and is paced well to suit the needs of young people and children. We have found in our sessions that the session material is prompting some really good discussions and giving young people a place to talk about how they are feeling. Another big plus for us is that we really are enjoying running this and can see how the programme will support children and young people.
The programme includes some role play, including a ‘court room’ session, and some resources for the young participants to take home and remain connected to the insights that the sessions have brought them. Here is some further feedback:
We did the court room session last week and the young people were so good at arguing for and against their statements with Judge Shaun supporting. I also went in to a family home yesterday and there was the young person’s strength shield in his kitchen on the wall for all his family to see and he had described to his family what it meant to him.
