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CURRENT
Promoting Health and Emotional Wellbeing: Accredited Training for Supported Housing staff working with Young People (2006 - 2010)
Background
Young People in Focus has received a grant from the Big Lottery to fund a project (2006-10) to devise an accredited training programme to enable staff working in supported housing settings to promote young people’s health and emotional wellbeing.
The project’s key elements are:
- research with young people and staff to identify programme
content - creating a programme that can be delivered in flexible ways
- piloting the programme
- developing learning support material
There are approximately 18,000 young people aged 16-24 in supported housing and a large number of provider agencies of different kinds. Young people in supported housing have often had extremely disrupted lives and include some of the most vulnerable young people in society including care leavers and those who have been in custody. Research indicates that these young people have high rates of poor health. Training for staff is very patchy and staff are often feel ill-equipped to deal with some of the major health-related difficulties the young people experience such as depression and self-harm.
Young People in Focus is working closely with key national organisations in the supported housing field to create this programme. It has also joined forces with the National Children’s Bureau (NCB), which has already carried out research and development work on this topic. NCB co-ordinates supported youth housing network meetings as part of this project.
Research
The project’s first stage focused on research to create the programme design and content. Completed questionnaires from 146 supported housing managers and interviews with young people and staff has resulted in the following four-module course structure:
- Young people now; transitions, development and
emotional wellbeing - The role of the support worker; building positive
relationships - Approaches to working with troubled young people;
improving their social networks - Working with others; looking after yourself
Please see Dissemination and Reports section of the website for the research reports.
Final Stage
The final stage involves piloting the programme (autumn 2009) and developing the learning support materials (including DVD) and delivery structure. The project will be completed at the end of February 2010.
Project staff
Kevin Lowe is the project manager. Jayne Hellett leads on programme development. Julie Shepherd is the project team’s researcher.
More information
Please e-mail Kevin Lowe or call him on 01273 647 335
June 2009