Working with Young people in Schools Project - 2005-2007

The Working with Young people in Schools Project (WYSP) is a 2 year project funded under the Western Sydney Area Assistance Scheme to support closer working contact between schools and community agencies to benefit young people.

Strategies

• Provide Professional Development Opportunities, including:
  1. training and support for community sector workers and teachers to work together on delivering programs that have been shown to help young people become more resilient eg Girls can Do Anything, Friends for Life, Rock and Water and Kinks and Bends
  2. specific Working with Schools workshops aimed at demystifying the school sector for community-based workers and promoting the benefits to schools of increased cross-sector collaboration
  3. mentoring for community sector workers needing support with building confidence and skills in working in the school context
• Develop Pilot and Demonstration Projects creating new partnerships as well as learning opportunities for community-based and school workers
• Produce a Working with Schools Resource for school and community-based workers in Penrith, including:
  1. a fact sheet file with a local guide for referring young people according to their most frequently identified issues; and
  2. the nuts and bolts of establishing successful programs in partnership with schools
• Develop local Working with Schools Protocols through Penrith Youth Interagency to enable the process of establishing cross-sector relationships to be clarified, supported and encouraged by both sectors.

Project Snapshots

Pathways Health and Research Centre - Griffith University

• Friends for Life Professional Development and Pilot

38 Teachers, Youth and Community workers attended training on how to deliver Friends for Life - a program shown to increase resilience in children and young people from 7 to 16 years. Following the training, a group of schools and community partners met to plan implementation. Nepean Adolescent and Family Service and Glenmore Park High School are cooperating to present the program to a group of 20 Year 9 students, who will become mentors for primary students in 3 feeder schools. By targeting schools and relevant community agencies within a particular community, we not only enabled access to an effective program for at least 114 students, but also achieved improved links between the schools and increased community involvement with implementation. Ongoing cooperation is highly likely following this positive start to relationship building.

• Rock and Water Pilot and Mentoring Opportunity

Rock and Water was developed in the Netherlands by Freerk Ykema, a physical education teacher, remedial teacher and counselor, in order to address boys’ lack of self esteem and risk taking behaviour; to meet the need for a different, more suitable approach to learning social skills; and to encourage positive aspects of being male. Rock and Water also contains useful learning for girls, but is more successful if delivered to single sex groups.

Rock and Water is an excellent program, however is challenging to deliver through a school-community partnership model because of the concerns many schools have with its physically active approach to learning. In addition, community-based workers need to be able to build up confidence with a new way of working with young people and in an unfamiliar setting (the school environment) without compromising on quality.

3 community-based workers and 2 classroom teachers were able to get hands-on experience during a one-day implementation of Rock and Water with 36 boys in Years 5 and 6 at York Public School. Mentoring during the pilot implementation of Rock and Water was successfully employed to support the establishment of a positive working relationship between the school and community workers whilst delivering a high quality experience for young people. Facilitators who had been recently trained in the program could “cut their teeth” with support from more experienced presenters. At the same time teachers could be reassured about the program’s effectiveness in their context.

This pilot was extremely successful with evaluations providing evidence of learning and enjoyment by all. The benefits of ongoing community collaboration were convincingly demonstrated.

Further information about the Rock and Water program is available from the GADAKU Institute website: www.rockandwaterprogram.com

• Girls Can Do Anything Professional Development and Mentoring

Girls Can Do Anything was developed by Spyns’ Youth Workers in response to an identified need for a strengths based program to support young women through the development hurdles of adolescence. It has become our most asked-for program and is adaptable to emphasise particular issues such as bullying, body image, sexual harassment or drug and alcohol awareness. Girls Can do Anything also includes a self defence workshop. Young women experience themselves making a powerful physical impact, which contributes to them believing in their own strength generally.

Early in 2006 we ran 2 Girls Can Do Anything Professional Development Workshops which 45 school and community sector workers attended. It was hoped that bringing school and community sector workers together for professional development would foster the growth of new school-community partnerships.

Feedback from the workshops was very positive. Everyone participating received a program manual and an offer to receive mentoring support when conducting pilots. Many have since indicated they are running or planning to run programs of their own.

When implementing Girls Can Do Anything in schools, we regularly use the opportunity to mentor youth workers and teachers who want to learn how we deliver the program. Involving teachers with program delivery has not only promoted cross-sector relationship building, but more workers confident to deliver the program leads to greater program availability and sustainability.

Work in Progress

• The Working with Young People in Schools resource kit is currently being developed and will satisfy the need for an easy-to-use guide to the main issues affecting young people. It will contain a fact sheet file and information on local youth-friendly services for occasional referrers like high school year advisors and community workers who don’t specialise in youth work. It will also include a guide to establishing successful programs in partnership with schools.
• Protocol Development is being pursued through the Working with Schools Sub-committee of Penrith Youth Interagency. The point of this is to make it easier for youth and community workers to break the ice with schools and for schools to be more welcoming to community-sector agencies and better appreciate the quality contributions they can make to student wellbeing.