Blog

On Sunday 5th June we joined colleagues, partners and amazing volunteers at The Norwich Cathedral Volunteers Celebration Picnic.  The impact is often calculated in long reports, but anyone who has worked closely with volunteers doesn’t need a report to know the difference they make.  And it’s great timing for us, as we are currently evaluating the impact of our volunteer mentors in Norwich.  We’re sad that the funding for this project has ended in Norwich and working hard to secure more.  It’s very inefficient to recruit and train mentors for a short-term project, only to let them go and start again when a new round of funding appears.  For the moment though, let’s dwell on their successes and the difference they make.  A young person describing her mentor as ‘crucial’ to her current success and ‘not knowing where I’d be without her’ says it all.  We’re training more volunteer mentors for our North Norfolk and Broadland project on 7th and 8th July. If you interested in making a difference click on the link to find out more.

We’ve seen a big increase recently in Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) courses being delivered 1-2-1 to young people.  This is often because the young people are in college or working and can’t attend a group course.  We usually travel to wherever they’re living, but are as content delivering in a coffee shop if the young person feels like getting out.  What has been interesting this week is to observe three different young people.  They are all roughly the same age, all leaving care locally and all moving to independence very soon.  And yet their knowledge is a gulf apart.  The youngest and least experienced knew most about renting privately and the oldest and most ‘worldly wise’ could barely name a welfare benefit or the circumstances in which she might claim them.  Notwithstanding the extraordinary change they are about to experience by moving from their supported environment to living independently, it naturally poses challenges for us, the trainers.  We have a set of tools, games and interactive techniques that must adapt to each situation, each learner and each learning style.  What isn’t in doubt is just how much they get from these sessions with us.  Noticeable of late isn’t that they necessarily come out as perfect budgeters or experts on Universal Credit, but that they are starting to do the thinking that’s required.  They’re starting to plan.  And with that they’re less anxious and dare to plan more.  It’s a virtuous circle.

I’ve been working with young people for nearly twenty years. It’s easier in lots of ways.  I’ve got loads of tools and tricks that mean I respond to the situation, come up with new methods of engagement and make the training fun.  But I’m not desensitised to their stories, which although this can mean heartache, it also means I’m human and able to react as human and not a robot. But it’s still hard too.  Why?  No matter how great our courses are, no matter how hard we try, no matter my unshakeable belief in people’s resilience and capacity to change, we are just one piece of their puzzle.  Our young people’s lives are so complicated and full of challenges that I still want to do more and ‘solve’ everything.  I have neither the skills nor time to do this and nobody needs ‘solving’.  Of course it’s a positive because it drives me on to do more and to work more collaboratively with others who share some of the answers.  All the young people working with us this week want to stay working with us, and that engagement must be the first step.  So let’s keep up the good work.  Read a one-page impact report of this week here.

 

 

There are times when I’m so exhausted by thinking about what we do that I don’t know what I think any more.  These times are helped by coming across someone else having the same thought and being braver than me, by saying it.  Approbation of our thought process is sometimes needed to move forward and this has happened twice this week in different ways.  My peers at the School for Social Entrepreneurs on Wednesday helped me to see the challenges of scaling up and personnel in a new way.  It had been lurking in my thoughts, but when five people are saying the same thing, it gives your thoughts a new validity and unlocks action.  I also struggle massively with the negative connotations that surround us about people on benefits, low incomes and the material choices people make.  When you’ve been championing a cause for so long and witness so much obstruction, it is natural to question your own belief system and start to wonder if the media, who have a vested interested in getting viewers, are right after all.   Lisa Mckenzie wrote a book about life on the Nottingham estate where she grew up entitled ‘Getting By’.  In it she brings honesty to the Jeremy Kyle conundrum of why when we’re struggling for money we go and buy something we can’t afford.  The first point is that most of us buy things we can’t really afford a lot of the time.  This is not a symptom of one group of people.  Secondly, if life is really, really tough and you’re living day-to-day financially, is it that wrong to buy a pair of nice shoes?  If that’s the first thing that has made you feel good about yourself in months, then isn’t it the purchase of a kind of therapy akin to yoga, a gym membership or a good meal?  Of course we can get into the consequences of not paying the rent or the electricity bill, but who am I to stand in judgement of someone who wants a bit of ‘feel good’ when so little does? I’m off for a run in my expensive running shoes…

This week saw three days of Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) Training in King’s Lynn.  Commissioned by Children’s Services, we delivered three packed and innovative days to seven young people leaving local authority care.  We were generously hosted by Broadland Housing Association and Alex Hand from Breckland Council also briefly joined us on the second day to share her housing expertise.  Three days of content takes careful planning.  With two staff we had enough content for five days, allowing us to respond to the mood, energy levels and learning styles of those in the room.  Some activities evolved into longer ones, whilst others were cut short when the young people visibly flagged.  Seven was a good number for the size of the venue and their learning needs.  When undertaking individual work, most required 1-2-1 learning support and blossomed with this additional help and encouragement.  Our group started the week apprehensively, anxious of meeting new people and as very reluctant learners.  To watch them request games, interact with each other, find new girlfriends (!) and offer to present to each other but the end of the week is the most rewarding and hard-earned part of what Your Own Place does.  Well worth an exhausting three days.  Read our one-page impact report here.