News from Webwheel (Click here for News from Centres)

The Real Deal training programme - Live life b4 you give life

The programme is based on the 70-page training manual which was compiled during the first pilot phase. The main emphasis of the programme is to educate young girls about the importance of giving serious consideration and time to the decision to have sex and the consequences of engaging in sex at such a young age.

Six areas are covered during the training:

Self esteem
Sex Education and Contraception
Drugs including alcohol
Sexually Transmitted Infections
Life as a Teen Mum – the realities of parenting at a young age
“Not now – later” (goal setting)

The programme takes one full day of training.

Participants receive the REAL DEAL training manual at the end of the programme, which has all of the information from the course included along with a list of useful contact phone numbers.

The Peer Educators have all received REAL DEAL training and are fully versed in child protection protocols.

REAL DEAL training is suitable for teenage girls, primarily aged 14 –19 in formal and non formal education settings. In general the ideal group size for training purposes is 25 – 30.

REAL DEAL is available to schools, training centres or youth groups. For further information visit the website www.therealdeal.ie or contact Anne Fitzpatrick on 085 1942289

Larry Brendtro Workshops, Dublin, 4 and 5 November 2010

Larry Brendtro is a psychologist and educationalist who has developed a model of support for troubled children called the Circle of Courage. He has written several books and academic articles and presents training workshops for people working and living with challenging young people. According to his model, positive growth results from opportunities to experience belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. The approach integrates findings from resilience research with key value principles and has the goal of providing a roadmap to positive youth development. He will deliver two workshops, one on the Circle of Courage model and the second on his new work Deep Brain Learning.

Click here for full details

Samaritan’s Developing Emotional Awareness and Learning Programme (DEAL)

The Irish and British Samaritans organisation has developed a wonderful social personal and health education (SPHE) programme. Known as DEAL (Developing Emotional Awareness and Learning), this free programme was designed for schools to help young people aged 14-16 develop the skills they need to cope with life's challenges and to develop their emotional health and wellbeing.

The resources aim to help students to develop an understanding of the meaning of the term ‘emotional health’ as it relates to them, and their friends, family and peers. The lessons also try to help students to identify coping strategies for stressful or difficult situations they may face, and to reflect on the positive and negative consequences their choices could have.

The resources are equally suited to learners in the Youthreach / CTC context and can be used comfortably with young people who are slightly older than the original target group.

Flexibility

DEAL can be taught as part of a lesson on a range of subjects, including English literature, drama, RE and geography. Samaritans has developed DEAL so that emotional health is seen as relevant to learning generally, rather than any one specific area of the curriculum, reflecting the fact that emotional health-related skills are important to all parts of life. This approach fits very well with the importance given to personal and social development in the Youthreach and CTC programmes.

DEAL materials are designed not just for use by PSHE specialists, but also by generalist teachers like class tutors or keyworkers, and can be used as a series of lessons or as part of a collapsed curriculum day.

The materials cater for different learning styles, and are based on a facilitative style of teaching, which encourages pupils to express and develop their own ideas and ways of thinking about the issues in question.

Resources

Most of the resources can be freely downloaded directly from the Samaritan’s website http://www.samaritans.org/your_emotional_health/work_in_schools.aspx. These include information booklets, staff training activities, lesson plans, factsheets, videos and audio recordings, while a 6-part interactive DVD is available on request (see below).

The themes of the DEAL programme lesson plans are:


A1. Emotional Health Awareness	B1. Understanding Depression B2. Understanding Self-injury B3. Understanding Suicide		D1. Emotional Health and Poetry D2. Earthquake! The Human Impact
A2. Communication & Listening skills A3. Body Language	B4. Stress Management and Problem Solving B5. Aggression & Bullying	C4. Dealing with Conflict C5. Personal and Global Conflict
A4. Sources of Support			D3. Drama 1 D4. Drama 2 D5. Drama 3

DVD

Every secondary school in the UK and the Republic of Ireland received a copy of the DEAL resources as part of the launch in October 2006. However, a free copy of the DEAL interactive DVD is now available to Youthreach centres and CTCs. To request a copy please email Sam Oakley at schools@samaritans.org and mention Mary Gordon.

DES Funding Review

The Department is currently conducting a review of the uses of the funding provided for Guidance, Counselling and Psychological Services in 2008.
VECs are the lead partners in relation to this funding and as such are responsible for

Channelling funds to the providers of these services
Coordinating the administration and reporting on this initiative.

Both VECs and centre coordinators / directors / managers are being asked to complete a short questionnaire on their use of the budget provided for this purpose and to return these to Mary Gordon by Fri 4 September 2009. These questionnaires can be downloaded below, filled in electronically and returned by email to Mary_Gordon@neps.gov.ie.

Questionnaire for VECs

Questionnaire for centre coordinators / directors / managers

European Year of Creativity and Innovation

The WebWheel website is very pleased to say that the Special Educational Needs Action in Youthreach was one of the projects selected by the European Commission as representing a practice that stimulates innovative or creative behaviour in people and promotes an innovative or creative approach to problems in society.

The European Commission has declared 2009 the European Year of Creativity and Innovation (EYCI 2009). This is taking place within the overall framework of several EU policy initiatives fostering creativity and innovation, including European Parliament and Council actions on key competences for lifelong learning, on innovation strategies and the creation of new jobs and on policy cooperation in education and training. The aim is to raise awareness of the importance of creativity and innovation for personal, social and economic development; to disseminate good practices; to stimulate education and research, and to promote policy debate on related issues. The activities are aimed at a range of different groups including young people, educators, firms, policy makers and the general public. Among the themes being addressed is innovation in public and private services.

The European Commission is showcasing the SEN Action as an example of a very innovative and creative European project and has published an account of it under Projects on its EYCI 2009 website (http://create2009.europa.eu/http://create2009.europa.eu/ ).

An anger management programme that is now available to Youthreach and Senior Traveller Training and Community Training centres is called the Cool Anger Management (CAM) programme and was devised by Brian Lennon, a psychologist and guidance counsellor who works for Co Louth VEC. Brian describes the programme as a series of activities to help teenagers deal with strong emotions.

The programme has three main goals: 1) to help teenagers become more aware of their anger; 2) to help them deal more effectively with it; and 3) to provide teaching staff with practical guidelines. The materials in the programme can be used in a number of different ways. They can be targeted at young people with identified anger problems, either through group work or in one-to-one sessions, and they can also be used in a more general way with groups as an SPHE programme dealing with mental well-being.

The approach used in this programme has the advantage of being highly learner-centred and flexible, and it fits well with the WebWheel model. It is recommended to any centre that wishes to address the issue of anger (and other strong emotions) in a systematic way.

Your VEC has a budget for staff training and you may be able to draw on this to obtain the CAM programme. While Brian is happy to make his programme available at a very low cost, he wants it first to be formally introduced to staff in the centre through a one-day training session by a facilitator that has been trained in it by him. The list of these facilitators, along with their contact details, can be obtained from Mary Gordon - Mary_Gordon@neps.gov.ie.

The new edition of Information for Young Parents in Educationis now available thanks to a grant received from the Crisis Pregnancy Agency.

This new edition has been expanded on the previous one and there is now a separate section on Financial Supports for Higher Education. Other contents include a list of Youth Cafés, Young Parents Programmes, General Financial Supports, Back to Education / Training, Childcare and a list of useful organisations. For pregnant students attention is also drawn to the Home Tuition Scheme and Exams during Labour.

With the approaching school year this publication will be useful to young parents who are considering entering or re-entering education. The publication aims to assist young parents to be the best providers they can be for their families by increasing their employment possibilities.

The booklet is available free of charge from Treoir, info@treoir.ie, LoCall: 1890 252 084 or 01-6700 120. It can also be downloaded from the publications section of Treoir’s website: www.treoir.ie.

According to the Irish Health Poverty Index published in August 2008 by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland, the Republic of Ireland experienced one of the fastest rising suicide rates in the world during the 1980s and 1990s, with the overall suicide rate doubling during that period. The level of death by suicide here remains high, and particularly among young people in the age range 15 – 24 years. However, research from Australia and elsewhere suggests that the mentoring approach used in the WebWheel model can provide the kind of support that appears to be effective in reducing youth suicide. See the item in Level B.

Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Mr. Séan Haughey T.D., launching the WebWheel website

The Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Mr. Séan Haughey T.D., launched the new WebWheel support website for the Youthreach, Senior Traveller Training and Community Training Centre programmes in Dublin on 26 November 2007.

The Minister introduced the website as a useful resource to management and staff working in the programmes and to practitioners and agencies that provide services to centres. He said that it contained a wide range of materials relating to the provision of supports for learners, including guidelines on mentoring, advocacy, guidance, counselling, psychological services and provision for special educational needs.

Mary Gordon (Senior Psychologist, Department of Education) and Dermot Stokes (National Coordinator of Youthreach) with the Minister

The “website is an important user friendly reference for all those working in the sector. Although in its infancy the website contains a large amount of reference and support material already and this will undoubtedly grow as the site develops and expands”.

At the launch the Minister took the opportunity to thank all those involved in the development of the website, especially editor Ms. Mary Gordon, the members of the Portfolio Project who compiled the materials published on the site, webmaster Mr. Brendan Sheehan and designer Ms Gabby Dowling.

Members of the Portfolio Project Group: Eileen Fitzpatrick (National Centre for Guidance in Education), Brendan Sheehan (WebWheel webmaster), Anne Fitzpatrick (Advocate Service, FÁS), Gerry Griffin (Senior Traveller Training Centres), Minister, Bláthnaid Ní Chinnéide (National Adult Literacy Agency), Mary Gordon

The website has been developed in parallel with the rollout and implementation of a new initiative to support the special educational needs of learners in Youthreach. This is the first year in which the new initiative has been operating in 20 Youthreach centres on a pilot basis, and the Minister took the opportunity to highlight what “has been a wonderful achievement and I wish to sincerely thank you for your hard work and endeavour in bringing this ambitious new initiative to fruition”.

The Minister concluded by extending best wishes to all those continuing their hard work in their centres and he hoped the new website would prove beneficial to all.

National Learning Network
The National Learning Network run short Continuous Professional Development programmes for trainers, teachers and other staff working in rehabilitation, training and community settings. They are of one to three days duration and delivered in venues all over the country. The programmes come with a full range of background reading and relevant documentation supplied on CD. It is intended that these short courses will become modules leading to two major FETAC accredited awards at level 6 in Inclusive Education and Rehabilitation. NLN’s current programmes include:
* FETAC Assessor Training
* Mental Health Awareness
* Practical Skills for Trainers
* Specific Learning Difficulties for Practitioners

This section is for material provided by centres. It demonstrates some of the range of activities and interventions taking place in centres for supporting learners and increasing their well-being and resilience. It also includes examples of the work and creativity of the learners themselves. Centres are invited to send Mary Gordon material for inclusion in this section.

The Dream

I live in a world of love
Tranquillity and harmony
Where every little thing is resolved peacefully
There is never crime
War or even poverty
In this world I live in I’m the happiest I could be
There are no such things as orphans
Or living on the street

It never ever rains here
Just sun shine and summer heat
There is no such thing as global warming
And the ice cap never melts
There is no such thing as heartbreak
And pain is never felt

The only thing about this world
Is it doesn’t last too long you see
Because in the morning
My world is always gone

Rebecca O’Connor
Transforum Alley Youthreach - April 09