Summary
The Friday Night Youth Club is an ASN & Complex needs specific club run by trained staff and volunteers. It caters for young people age 12-18 years to provide social opportunities and friendships with peers, allowing parent/carers to have a short break.
What Friday Night Youth Club did
The Friday night youth club, based in Motherwell, ran for three hours every Friday night, creating a positive environment for the young people involved and changing the lives of the carers in a small but significant way. The primary aim of the club was to promote the inclusion of young people with disabilities and complex needs within a regular youth club alongside their peers. Young people could access the club from various locations throughout North Lanarkshire using a mini bus that was provided to ease any barriers to attending. Running simultaneously to the club was a volunteer training programme, managed and overseen by trained support workers and supervisor. The presence of these peer mentors within the youth club created a fresh perspective, fostering the creation of positive relationships between the young people and volunteers.
From the humble origins of the project, and as co-partners in the planning of their weekly programme, the young people ensured there was a varied schedule of activities to enjoy. This was facilitated by staff on a weekly basis. Some of the highlights of the project included; an animation workshop, boxing class, drum session, yoga, mini zoo, music, football, x box games, baking and cookery, make up trials, karaoke and visits from local police and firemen.
Parent/carers were very vocal about the difference the club had made to their own lives, as having regular respite at the same time every Friday night meant they had time to spend having dinner with their other half or simply relaxing after a difficult week. Knowing that their young person had a club that they enjoyed going to, in an environment suitable to meet their additional support needs, was invaluable to the enjoyment of their own respite as parent/carers.
What Partners in Play has learned
An important learning curve for our organisation was to learn the value and importance of volunteers and the contribution they can make to their peer group of young people with an additional support need. By harnessing their energy and enthusiastic for the role, we created a volunteer pathway within our organization, with the vision of effectively growing our own support workers. Their amazement at the increase of their own confidence and abilities has been genuinely lovely for our organisation to observe.
Initially we also had a few teething problems with the project, mainly around staff leaving posts and having to fill positions quickly. We adapted to ensure that the quality of the project wasn’t compromised during the period of uncertainty. It was important we learned to think on our feet and change things quickly. This didn’t deter our Friday Night Youth Club from going from strength to strength as the new coordinator, a driving force behind the project, provided much needed direction for the volunteers and support workers.
How Partners in Play has benefitted from the funding
The funding from Better Breaks has allowed us to trial a much-needed project for the young people attached to our organisation. At the core of this project has been the volunteer training programme which has created places for volunteers across all of our projects. The young people have enthusiastically responded to having mentors their own age supporting them. This is evident with the things that they have in common. Particularly with gaming and football helping to build up relationships quickly. In turn, the volunteers are learning about what it is like to have a disability and complex need and how this affects their everyday lives. There are now over 20 active volunteers participating in the youth club, all of them underwent an intensive 3-week training course took place which included:
• Volunteer induction
• Disability Awareness Training
• First Aid Training
• Moving & Handling Training
• Safeguarding Children Training
• Managing challenging behaviour Training
At the end of the project one of the volunteers received further praise with the opportunity to be nominated for a ‘Diana Award’. This is an award that recognises young people for selflessly creating and sustaining positive social changes in memory of Diana Princess of Wales. The young boy had stood out to all staff at the youth club as being very involved and eager to help include and support our young people with ASN.
Project Outcomes
Outcome
A personalised and fun, regular ASN youth club which the young people have enjoyed being involved with and which has helped to establish links in local community.
Results
It was important that the young people had more of a participatory role within their youth club, particularly so with 2018 being, ‘The year of the Young Person’. The ethos of our organisation is underpinned by Children’s rights legislation and we wanted to ensure this permeated throughout our project. As such, our young people were directly involved in the planning of their group and had the opportunity to Co-design their own activity programme. The support workers and volunteers provided the necessary tools and visual aids for the young people with communication needs, making sure that all the views and needs of all young people were represented. A planning fun day was held at the beginning of the project, where the staff, volunteers and young people had the opportunity to meet and share ideas for their youth club. This was drawn up and signed by all the participants and became a mandate for action. It was then used at the end of the project as a measure of success and achievement.
Case study
Child A has a diagnosis of Autism and ADHD. He has a fairly unsettled home life and is currently living with foster parents. Upon his first outing to the club, he was withdrawn, unresponsive and displaying high levels of anxiety. He found it difficult to enter the building tightly clutching his wrestling figurines as a way of comforting himself. Eventually he was coaxed gently into the hall by the young volunteers and staff, who found that the wrestling figures could be used as way of communicating and helping him participate with planning activities. At the planning day, they asked the wrestlers what they would like to see on the programme, and this strategy was used at the beginning of sessions. During the visit with the Police Officer, Child A was completely uncooperative, sat with his hood up the entire time and even muttered ‘pig’ under his breath. Upon asking what was wrong with the police he stated that he didn’t trust them. The community police officer took notice of this and decided to make weekly ‘pop in’ visit to the youth club, interacting with the young people, playing computer games and table football.
Throughout the weeks, the turnabout in Child’s A confidence and perception of the police has been remarkable. After numerous ‘winning’ gaming sessions he was suddenly racing to get into the building, referring to the officer as his buddy and most notably the wrestling figurines started staying in for the night. He’s been much chattier and when asked for his evaluation and thoughts of the youth club at the end of the project he stated that it was ‘safe here’ for him and he was worried it was going to ‘stop one day and he wouldn’t see his friends as much’.
This regular club has fostered a safe place to build new friendships and hopefully participate in other clubs in his local community, he has expressed interest in a local gaming club. Visits from the community police have broken down fragmented perceptions of the role of the officers in his life and turned it into a positive experience.