Xmas with care leavers

I spent Xmas day yesterday volunteering with the Tope project.

The Tope project was set up by a group of volunteers because a young man, Tope, himself a care leaver, took his own life a few years ago around the Xmas period. Xmas time was identified as a particularly lonely and difficult time, and this group of people thought it would be great to set up a project for care experienced young people to come together and enjoy the day. This was their pilot project for 70 young people.

I had a really inspiring and memorable Xmas yesterday. Firstly, the day was superbly organised. Outside my social work MA and for the previous 10 years, I have been running my own charity, and so I know quite how difficult it is to run big events in spare time. But this event was incredible, and it seemed to really bring to light everything Xmas is all about. All the volunteers genuinely just cared and wanted to put on a fantastic day for the care leavers. There was a huge amount of food, fun and activities, from arts and crafts, to giant jenga, xmas films and incredible goodie bags for everyone with donations of gifts. Lorraine Pascale, herself a care leaver, showed up to give away signed books and talk about her own experiences, and an Arsenal rep, gave out gifts and the chance to tour the Emirates.

But what I really loved was chatting to so many young people and watching them chat to each other. I met young people who used to be homeless and recently have spent years in hostels, young people living with siblings in cheap hotels because there is no housing available, and young people still in care, who for whatever reason, decided they would prefer to spend Xmas with other care experienced young people than their foster family. Just before i left, two of the girls on my table started to bond, to chat over their experiences, over the careers they might want to do, or the song they might sing to the room - and it just felt pretty awesome. The whole experience felt inclusive. Some of the inspiring people who helped to lead it, from the Children's Rights Service just brought tonnes of energy, and had everyone laughing but also identifying with the experiences they talked of. It was grassroots, it was what the wonderful Cameron would call the Big Society, in between trying to make these people homeless by cutting their housing benefit. (sorry i digress!).

It chimed with me partly because I love working with young people, and got the same buzz from it that I did after mentoring during the summer, and from my current placement working with children in care, partly because it''s reinforcing the topic of my dissertation. I'm looking into the lack of emotional support care leavers get and how to help them in developing a support network, or understanding why they might not choose to engage with what social workers traditionally offer. I also saw how resilient these young people were, having gone through tough times, but still able to come together, many of whom turned up as teenagers at the event knowing no-one, and laugh and joke together, offering me advice as a trainee social worker (get to know the young person, keep in contact, remember to build a relationship, not just talk about issues, be supportive) and finally, because there is nothing better than being surrounded by volunteers like you, with the same passion, the same interests and with a desire to make a difference.

Thank you to the Tope project for giving me the opportunity to be part of such an inspiring and memorable event.

Every time i have an experience like this, it makes me question the direction I want my career to go  -is it social work, is it youth work, is it some kind of charity youth engagement role, or entrepreneurial social enterprise role - but whatever it is, it has to be something that makes me feel the way I did yesterday.

And another five tools...

And another five:

Going on a journey:

Another way of helping young children to open up about their family and relationship. Draw a picture of a bus or a toy bus and the invite the child to pretend they are going on holiday with their family. Ask, ‘who would you sit next to on the bus?’ and ‘where might you like go on holiday’ – if they draw a tent, ask them who would you feel comfortable sharing your tent with’……

More story-telling:

You can also use techniques such as a day in the life of a child. You can use role play or dolls to take the part of different members of the family. If you are playing the  part of a member of the family, ask the child what you should say in certain scenarios.

The magic carpet ride – this can be useful to assess attachment.

It is adapted by Mary Corrigan 1990.

Introduce a magic story ride – close your eyes, imagine you are sitting on a beautiful rug infront of a fire at home, on the rug is a basket of your favourite food. Describe the food, everytime you take something more food appears. The rug is very soft and it gently lifts up. Hang on as it flies, it is going down the hall to the front door of a house where the door is open. Someone is standing there, who is it?

This is likely to be the person they feel most attached to and safe with.

Body pictures – this can be useful if you suspect physical or sexual abuse

A body is drawn onto a large piece of paper. Using colouring pens, invite the child to draw their face then ask them where in the body they feel happy, bouncy, cold, warm, cross, angry and shocked. Ask if they have had any bumps and bruises and invite them to draw and colour these in. The child can make clothes for their picture from wapping paper. Plasters or cream can be applied to the most painful places so the child feels heard and better.

The window: (this is very similar to 3 houses).

A worker can draw a window and then the child to draw in the top right hand corner a picture of something in their past, in the bottom corner a picture of the present, top left, a picture of their hoped for future and in the bottom left a picture of the fear that will prevent their hopes for the future being revealed.

Direct work with young people

I thought it might be helpful to post examples I find of good exercises to do with young people.

I'll keep adding to these and it would be great if anyone wants to share their own! Please tweet or comment to add.

I need to also think about a more useful way of categorising them, rather than in a long list - but that might be a future project.

First five

1. 3 Islands - helps to understand dynamics of relationships

Draw 3 islands. Ask the young person who would be on the island with them, they would spend lots of time with these people. Who would be on the next island which has a bridge connecting it. They don’t see them all the time but can see them as and when they want. Who would be on the third island, far away, who they would not see.

This is helpful in opening up conversations to understand fears or risks associated with characters, both in the young person's history and present, can help with disclosures. Also helps show desires - who might they wish they were living with now? Who did they wish they could see more, or less?

2. Agony aunt scenarios - projective technique for more uncomfortable conversations/projecting by thinking through 3rd person

I used this when doing a sex education session with a young person. As she was quite embarrassed about the topic, I created some agony aunt scenarios to explore her attitudes to things like peer pressure i.e – “Dear…., At school everyone talks about having sex and I’m the one left out. I’m thinking I should just do it so I can fit in with everyone else, what do you think?”

      3.     Story Stems – this one came from a psychologist report - shows attachments and role expectations 

Story Stems are situations set up with dolls house figures and furniture. The psychologist sets up a story and begins to act out and narrate the scenario. The child is asked to complete the story. The stories are set within the family and contain situations triggering high arousal in the child character such as fear or pain, which would normally lead to the enactment of attachment behaviours such as seeking comfort from a caregiver. The way the child completes the story reflects on their attachment narrative and also tells us what their expectations of the roles of different family members and the relationships between them are like. The interpretation is based both on the content of the narrative the child gives, the coherence and style of the story, and the affect shown by the child when telling it.

    Narratives which are coherent, rich in detail of normal domestic life and contain      nurture and no traumatic intrusions reflect secure attachment experiences. Chaotic narratives, traumatic intrusions, and lack of warmth or detail show deficiencies in attachment e  experiences. Research has shown that story stems change over time, reflecting the improved quality of the child’s internal working model over time in a stable caring placement.

Examples include – coming home late without telling parents first, waking up having a nightmare, smashing the window with a ball.

    4.     Post boxes – also from a psychologist report - shows importance and quality of relationships

In this task the child selects post boxes to represent each member of their family. They are then given a large number of small cards with messages such as “this person frowns at me” and asked to post them to the most appropriate person. I explained the meaning of any unfamiliar words. Cards that the child does not wish to post to a member of the family can be posted to Mr Nobody. The number of cards given to different people usually represents the amount of importance that person has in the child’s life, and the content of the cards chosen reflects the quality of that relationship. To the original set I have added a number of cards indicative of child protection concerns, and issues relevant to parent-child relationships.

5. 3 houses - thanks to @MrDougalDog for reminding me of this one - strengths, risks and desires

This is based on the Signs of Safety risk assessment and helps to understands strengths, risks and desired safety - or things that need to change to get to the young person's desired outcomes. The three houses are 'house of worries' 'house of good things' 'house of dreams'. For each you look at internal and external factors - ie young person's own strengths, and those that comes from outside sources - friends, family, community etc.

On this link you can see an image of the template. You can download the powerpoint for a clearer one: http://www.practicecentre.cyf.govt.nz/policy/practice-tools/resources/three-houses-tool.html

Here is a helpful article with guidance on how to use it: http://www.d.umn.edu/sw/snydersfiles/AdvCW/week7/Three_Houses_Article.pdf

Children in Care team through the eyes of a newbie

I have been on my placement in a local authority Children in Care team (CiC) for ten days now. That’s obviously not a very long time and so this blog post comes from someone with limited experience. But one of the things I have been discussing with my fellow student is our lack of induction. The placement has been great so far, I’m loving it – but I do feel I’m asking a ridiculous amount of questions because we did, in many ways, get thrown into the deep end.

As such, I suppose this post is more for students or people wanting a basic insight into some of the things the team does on a day to day basis. Given that I’ve only been there for ten days, I will definitely leave lots out but I’ll come back to this at a later point.

So the basics:

Our CiC team handles a few child protection cases but mainly works with LAC or CLA (looked after children also known as children looked after…)

I have been allocated 3 ‘cases’ as well as co-working a CP case. 3 young people – all between the age of 10-15. However, our team can work with babies, from the moment of birth, up until 16 when the young people will be transferred to the 16+ team. I know this is different in some Local Authorities – for example some leaving care teams will meet the young person age 16 but not start formally taking over the case until they are 18.

On a basic level, in terms of statutory requirements:

-          I need to visit each young person every 4 weeks minimum (stat requirements are 6 weeks, in our LA it’s 4 weeks.)

-          I need to plan for and prepare for LAC reviews. They tend to happen every 6 months and involve writing a report, giving an update on all the areas of the CAF framework – child’s developmental needs, parenting capacity both of birth parents and foster parents etc. I have just completed my first one for a LAC next week. As part of this, it’s important to get the views of the young people pre the meeting. I was given a specific consultation leaflet to go through with my young person, but we are going to be learning to use a piece of software which is a much more dynamic and engaging way for young people to express their views, tailored to their age group – where they can choose themes and characters and play games while filling in their answers. After the LAC review, I will then be updating their care plan in accordance with key decisions made.

-          I need to attend PEP reviews every 6 months. Personal Education Plan meetings – where you discuss with the school how the young person is getting on, look at any extra support they might need…

-          You also need to make sure their health assessments are done on time and there is an ongoing health action plan

On top of this, there is a lot of day to day stuff. I have found so far that despite being pretty efficient (that’s not trying to blow my own trumpet but I think if I have one strength, being organised and efficient is it) I have a huge to do list that grows by the day. Each visit you do often ends in a pile of tasks – mine has included everything from applying for a passport for my young person to helping to arrange contact between them and their siblings to looking into whether a foster care agency will pay for the young person to go on a school trip.

Then there’s the stuff that you really want to be focusing on, creating more meaningful direct work with young people. From my measly 10 days, I can already see how little time there is to do this, even as a student. I have started to read up on life story work, in the hope of creating a book for one of my young people before she moves to her next long term placement. I am looking into finding an advocate for another young person and need to consider a referral to counselling, if their eligibility meets the threshold, for another.

In between this, there are duty days, where we must not arrange visits, but be on the desk for anything that might come in – such as supervising contact sessions between birth parents and children in care, or helping out with cases where the social worker might be away.

There’s also the limits set by the fact that you can only see young people after 4pm when they come home from school. I have found this can make it quite hard, in the three days a week I’m on placement, to fit all my visits in, but it’s also a really nice way to break up the day, if you’ve been sat working through your more ‘paperwork based’ to do list in the first half of the day, knowing your visit is coming up to look forward to.

There’s lots of other stuff that I know little about as it isn’t something I’ve yet had to do – like viability assessments – working out if someone might be a suitable foster carer before handing it over to the fostering team to do the full on assessment.

I’m loving it so far. It’s very interesting. There are a huge number of learning opportunities. Perhaps frighteningly so. We have a big responsibility – the term ‘corporate parent’ comes up a lot. And everytime I see something on my list move further down, it’s important to remember and sometimes reconsider priorities. It has made me sad that so early on, I’m struggling sometimes to find the time to work on the things I really want to, but I also think that the smaller tasks are taking me that much longer because I have to ask a million trivial questions.

It’s pretty damn exciting though. I’ve spent lots of time researching direct work techniques, starting to make my own toolkit, including my handmade board game! And a variety of worksheets for when they might be appropriate.

There are also many challenges, and I'm sure i'll go into these more once I gain further experience. But one that has struck me is the dynamic between social worker and foster carer. There have been 1 or 2 instances already where the tone a foster carer has used, or their advice to the young person, didn't sit entirely right with me - and I think that will be an interesting dynamic to explore further..

That’s all for now!

End of summer, preparing for final year.

I can’t quite believe my 2 month summer has come to an end. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d fill it but in the end it was ridiculously busy. I spent a bit of time back at the WhoCares Trust charity, I spent 2 weeks and 3 Sundays, on an incredible camp, mentoring 16 year olds. This has been my favourite bit of the summer and I’m sad to be saying goodbye to them this weekend. I’ve been back to adland to freelance. And I’ve completed my training to be a Prince’s Trust mentor next year. I’ve also spent a bit of time thinking about and reading up on my dissertation topic – which as it stands, is about the lack of emotional support/the role of the support network for care leavers…and am coming to the end of organising my big annual charity event which takes place next weekend. So…. This week I went to have a meet and greet at my new placement team, a local authority Children in Care team. Generally, I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity. This was my top choice for a placement team, and the area of foster care is one of the main ones that inspired me to move into social work, within a broader passion for social justice. I’m also pretty nervous. It’s going to be an extremely different environment from the last placement. In my first placement, the first 6 weeks were an induction period where we held no cases, and even when that changed, it grew slowly to 3 clients, all of whom lived in the setting and so were also ‘managed’ by all the staff there. This time, I have already been told 3 ‘cases’ allocated to me, before I’ve even begun. But there sounds like a heap of learning opportunities, and basically I just hope I’m up to the job. I was thinking a bit about the role – and how on the one hand, you’re trying to get your portfolio done for uni, and hit your key roles etc, and on the other hand you’re trying to impress your practice educator and do a good job. And I think its quite easy to forget, as a student, the third area – in this case, to do a great job for the children I’ll be working with, the whole reason we all chose this career. Whilst that may sound like I’m not doing it for the right reasons or ridiculous that I would even forget this – I don’t think that’s the case, I just think it’s easy to become bogged down in the targets you are being set and the task at hand, i.e to pass the MA! And so, to remind me of that constantly, I stuck on the wall a fantastic double page spread from the WhoCares magazine, entitled ‘social workers read this’ written by young people, with quotes as to what makes a good and bad social worker. Tomorrow comes an opportunity to recap on some of the law, ready for my first week next week. Here’s to a challenging but hopefully fantastic final year, and the chance to reinforce and reward my decision to change career! P.s If anyone has any idea how to sort the formatting in Blogger and make the paragraphs that I can see when i write the post, actually appear when i post it, i'd love to know!!

Working with teenagers for the first time...

This week I had my first experience of working with teenagers. I have been convinced for quite some time that this is the age group I’d like to work with when I qualify as a social worker, but I hadn’t actually had any experience to base that on. I’ve done youth work with 10-12 year olds for years but teenagers was a new thing. My experience on my first placement, working in a residential project for adults with mental illness had taught me many skills that I thought would also help with this age group. My role as keyworker had been all about developing one on one relationships, and I had worked with clients with a range of emotions, from aggressive behaviour to apathy and disengagement, all of which I felt would be relevant. This week I worked as a mentor on week 2 of a three week programme. (I still have week 3 to do, but it’s not residential.) It was an incredibly inspiring process and massively reinforced my desire to work with this age group. There’s so much written about young people, many of these stereotypes we discussed this week – of violence and anti-social behaviour, of laziness and apathy. But this group of young people couldn’t have been more different. In fact, one of them, on his 16th birthday, was on a visit that we lead to a care home where they engaged with people with both dementia and schitozphrenia, and turned to us to ask if he really had to leave then or if he could stay longer. He’d been going round giving the older people nicknames (in a good way) to make them feel part of our team. He was singing songs with them and generally having a pretty great time. This is the stuff that should make the press. This programme is all about inspiring future leaders and discussing engagement in the local community. As our group had signed up for drama, we worked with an incredible practitioner, who helped them make sense of their experience through theatre, and express many of the emotions and difficulties they had felt, in such a powerful showcase on the final day, that it brought some of the audience to tears. They left their families with a message of possibilities and hope. And they’re coming back next week to work on a campaign about raising awareness of mental health issues, in older people within their local community, to try to inspire and engage other young people. In addition to all this group work, myself and the other mentor of the team, carried out one on ones with each young person, spending time with them to discuss their goals in life and identify their strengths. This was probably my favourite bit of the week. Because this week was a huge learning for me too. At times I felt a bit despondent, looking at the other youth workers and feeling that I was a bit too shy in comparison, that I didn’t have their outgoing ability to jump into a room and instantly energise 63 kids. But over time, I have come to accept that there’s little point comparing yourself to those around you and to accept who I am and the strengths I do have, and I’d like to think that working in this way, through one on ones plays to my strengths. Getting to know these young people and inspire them to see quite how amazing they are. The theme that constantly came through was their lack of self belief. One of the things I most enjoyed was talking at the end of the week, to the mother of the drama’s leading lady. The girl whose acting skills blew me away but who was filled with insecurity. I really enjoyed telling her mum quite how great she was, and using the one on one time, to try to drum that in, just a little bit more. I also found certain moments a real challenge and learning for me. Having mainly worked with much younger children, I was in a few situations that I was not used to, where I saw young people upset and where it wasn’t for me to help. This was something I struggled with at first. One night I came back to my flat to find 2 of the 4 young people I was ‘looking after’ in tears. I got the sense that it was about something like a fight with a friend and I asked if they wanted to talk but they didn’t. It was incredibly difficult that evening going to sleep, hearing people crying from their rooms but accepting that they are not kids, they are young adults and they are entitled to their own space and their own way of coping, knowing I am there if needed. I think this is all part of learning about life development, and understanding how to tailor your communication appropriately. How to build the relationship of a mentor, not a friend or teacher. How to guide, support and inspire, not patronise or preach. I’m only halfway through my social work journey and I still don’t know where it will take me. But I really do feel privileged to have spent 6 months working with adults with mental illness and this last week and the next to come working with these young people. I don’t know what job out there is going to be right for me, whether it will be a pure social work one or not – but I do know that working with these young people in the last few days, has made me feel more fulfilled than I have in a long time.

End of my first placement - looking back

I am now at the end of my placement, just two weeks to go. Looking back, I think I have learnt huge amounts and been very luck to be placed in a setting where I have been so immersed in my clients' worlds, where I get to see them all during their good and bad days or hours, not just for the one hour social work appointment that I might be limited to in a different setting. I think that has been invaluable as a first year placement, helping me build my confidence in communicating with a range of clients, learning to put boundaries in place, to work with aggressive behaviour and to try to achieve some positive outcomes. I spoke in my group supervision on Friday about my lesson in celebrating the small differences. You can't come into this career without hoping to make a difference but none of us can 'fix' things. Of my 3 clients here, one is currently in prison and one has had to leave the placement temporarily after an aggressive incident. However within the last 6 months I can celebrate the little things I have achieved; the conversations where hopefully I broke through and helped give hope, the services I found and helped my clients engage with or the sense that someone cared which felt new and unusual to them. So many people struggle to define social work and admittedly my job on this placement has not been that of a traditional social worker - more a keyworker, working alongside therapists. But what has struck me, perhaps one of the many difficulties of the job, is that every time you open your mouth to a client/service user, you are doing your job and those words, that you often come up with in the moment are so important. When a client is telling me they feel suicidal, or unloved, or they are being threatening or just despondent or apathetic, we think in the moment of the best thing to say. And often I feel at that time quite a lot of pressure to consider my words carefully abd put the emphasis on listening. This is why I am glad next year we will be learning counselling skills. So I look towards my summer now, with a mixture of chill time, volunteering and dissertation work and am slightly disbelieving that I am now halfway through and will qualify next year. I am excited to start working with social workers in September and to get closer to the client group I believe I want to work with but I'll miss both clients and staff a huge amount. I feel lucky to have had this setting and I believe that the group supervision and fri afternoon business meetings together with regular 'pre' and 'post' groups are an invaluable foundation for reflective thinking, both on a personal and collaborative level. Bring on the final 2 weeks!