Europeace Youth Ltd ‘ Vulnerable Children and Families’ Brian De Lord - CEO 21/22 nd March 2013 – Team Teach Conferenc

1. Europeace Youth Ltd‘Vulnerable Children and Families’Brian De Lord - CEO21/22nd March 2013 – Team Teach Conference

2. Roles of Brian De Lord • English and Drama teacher • Teacher I/C of Sanctuary Unit • Senior Neighbourhood Youth and Community Worker • Photography tutor – Adult Education • Teacher in charge of EBD Students • School Counselor • Senior Project worker • University Lecturer • Chief Executive • Head Teacher

3. History of PPP • Southall Riots • Small Fragmented Local Authority Response • Expansion of Services in West London Educational and multi-disciplinary support for children, families, and communities – creation of a pedagogy – the Framework • Registered Not-for-Profit Social Enterprise • Ofsted registered Independent school • International work and partnerships

4. The Range of PPP Interventions: • Teaching and learning – Ofsted Registered School • Curriculum innovation – RSA Curriculum • Therapeutic support; 1:1, group therapy, family therapy • Vocational Education • Community Support • Advocacy • Mentoring support – volunteers, families. • Residentials

5. The Clients: • Vulnerable young children, their families and their communities. • Young refugees, new arrivals, migrants and unaccompanied foreign minors • NEETS, youth offenders, prisoners and their families The Training: Mentoring, Supervision, Group work, working with Families, building and maintaining networks, Non-Oppressive Practice, Europeace Youth Framework, 21st Learning Characteristics & Partnership working.

6. The PPP Projects • Europeace – Youth in Action • Breaking the Cycle of Violence - Daphne • European Dimension – EC Freedom, Security & Justice, Juvenile Gangs in the UK • Mental health needs for Young offenders – Daphne II • E-Learning for All – e-learning for vulnerable learners. • Residentials – Children in Need • Anti- Guns, Gangs & Knives – Home Office funded • ITACA – EC Fundamental Rights & Citizenship, Juvenile gangs in Europe & S. America • Creating spaces of Experience – Grundtvig, Emotional learning blocks • Vocational Footprints – Leonardo, Making vocational education sustainable • Exploring the Legacy of Oppression - Grundtvig • Youth in Focus – Big Lottery, with Action Acton • West London Focus – Skills Funding Agency, with CfBT • Engaged in Education – DfE, with Catch 22 • Teaching Trainers for Migrants & Roma–Grundtvig • Net for U – EC Freedom, Security & justice, Unaccompanied Foreign minors

7. Home Office Project • Targeted at young people in danger of becoming involved in gang activity • Partnership with Ealing Youth & Connexions Service and Diagrama UK • Recruit mentors with experience of gang activity • Train them in mentoring skills & attachment theory

8. Assessment and identification Children who • have experienced and have carried out random acts of violence or public humiliation • have experienced and have made use of terror techniques such as bullying, threats or assault • are both victim and the perpetrator of aggressive behaviour • are unable to demonstrate signs of empathy with their victims  • are unable to express emotions or show signs of their own vulnerability • feel an inappropriate level of debt, either emotional or financial, to family or friends • have extreme reactions to outside challenges and swing between being calm and traumatised • find it hard to reconcile conflicting feelings of love and hate • are unable to develop emotional defences against experiences of shame and humiliation about gang culture • experience or act out violence as a necessary form of self preservation

9. Strategies to combat the lure of gang culture Create a safe environment • Ensure someone is always available/ Work closely with the family/ Work collaboratively Develop and sustain a trusting relationship • Encourage an initially dependant relationship/ Establish a nurturing relationship/ Be accessible at all times and engage consistently/ Demonstrate and model empathy/ Listen actively Teach emotional awareness • Advance emotional learning by encouraging self reflection, empathy and accepting responsibility/ Demonstrate honesty, humility, humour and humanity/ Understand and explore the source of violent feelings/ Raise awareness of negative patterns of behaviour Find strategies for coping with frustration • Demonstrate and develop language to replace violence as expression of emotions/ Encourage communication/ Avoid punishment and reward strategies but raise awareness of social norms and boundaries Develop viable strategies for sustainable change • Through individual and group mentoring raise awareness and acknowledgement of negative patterns of behaviour/ Help develop a ‘shame shield’ by exploring the concept and consequences of shame/ Explore positive life changes and plans for the future/ Support family members to ensure that changes are sustainable

10. 8 Essentials for Combating Gang Crime • Nurture; a nurturing relationship is the key to rebuilding a young person’s self confidence and ability to positively negotiate their environment. Initiatives taking place around the country to deal with gangs and youth crime are valuable but can be improved by including nurture and attachment learning • Empathy and integrity; Mentoring is the best way of tackling gang related behaviour in young people, however it was stressed that mentoring must at all times be honest • Family work; supporting parents properly is absolutely key to helping young people move away from the influences of gang culture. • Community; working with young people in isolation will have limited success if the entrenched problems within their wider community are not properly taken into account. 5.Mental health; must be taken into account in any strategy that deals with their behaviour • Legacy of oppression; PPP believe that the legacy of oppression, of any form and to any community, must be adequately understood and explored when dealing with young people who are involved in gang crime • Specific Learning Difficulties; At least 60 % of young people involved in serious crime have specific learning difficulties • Remain optimistic; gang crime among young people is extremely complex, emotive and causes immeasurable suffering for the people who are involved. However in London, of the 1.8million young people, less than 1% is involved in crime. The problem must not be ignored or over-exaggerated, but kept in perspective.

11. Staff • Self – Aware • Vulnerable • Humble • Nurturing • Creative • Curious • Courage • Experimentation • Focused on exploring potential rather than mapping limitations

12. Framework Introduction The framework can be broken down into the following; • The practices • The qualities • The theories • The application • The environment

13. The Practices Reflexive Practice: • The ability to analyse one’s own practice against a variety of benchmarking frameworks. This would build connections with: emotional literacy, self-awareness, motivation, systemic influences including parental, cultural, societal, economic etc. There are two aspects of Reflexive Practice worth highlighting: Non-Oppressive Practice: • the use of relevant theories & concepts to actively expose and transform prejudice both in ourselves & others. Inter-Disciplinary Practice: • the ability to use a variety of professional disciplines in thinking & behaviour to enable the service to become more accessible. Deliberate Practice: • The ability to step out of our practitioner comfort zones and experiment with new interventions and theories.

14. Human Qualities • 4 Hs; Honesty, Humanity, Humour, Humility • Integrity • Trust • Accurate Empathy • Respect • Care • Curiosity • Courage and Risk taking • Loyalty • Hope • Love • Resilience

15. The Qualities - Process • Deceitfulness • Insularity • Superficiality • Arrogance • Prejudice • Insecurity • Identification • Fear • Defeatism • Judgemental • Defensiveness • Honesty • Humanity • Humour • Humility • Integrity • Trust • Accurate Empathy • Respect • Care • Hope • Love • Resilience The qualities, generally taken for granted, cannot develop without actively exploring the oppositional nature of the conflicts listed above.

16. The Theories • Attachment- The importance of a positive significant relationship between child and carer. • Attunement- The Wave Trust; Emotional trigger for violence. • Reparenting / Empowerment - Do vulnerable children need a re-parenting experience or empowering? Perhaps both? • Neurology –Discoveries around Brain function, and The impact of oppression/oppressing on physical brain growth. • Education / Learning Styles - Appropriate curriculum, accelerated learning, learning power. • Adult and Community Education - Capacity building for voluntary / community groups and individuals. e.g. Peer Activists, Roma Assistant Teachers, training prisoners as mentors.

17. Theories continued… • Person-Centred • Psychodynamic • Cognitive Behavioural • Multi-Cultural Therapy • Gender Continuum • Cultural Identity Theory • Gang Culture • Language and Communication Difficulties • Specific Learning Difficulties e.g. dyslexia, ADHD etc… • Partnership / Networking • Individualism / Collectivism • Importance of Context i.e. Families and Communities • 21st Century Learning Characteristics This is not an exhaustive list of the possibilities and should be used when appropriate. Which of these theories are oppositional and which are collaborative?

18. The Application • Experience / practice • Training • Self learning • Peer group learning • Professional Boundaries • Risk Management • Supervision • Team Building • Management • Partnership • Evaluation These facilitate the relationship between the other three, and contribute to the quality of service. How do we navigate the conflicting experiences we have during this process?

19. The Environment • Partnership/Networking • Collaboration not Manipulation • Service delivery structure organised around the needs of children, families and accessibility. • Target Setting • The variation in socio-political contexts across Europe • The Media • Social capital How do we use these concepts within the contexts of: the individual, the family, the wider community, the national and international communities, in partnership with other statutory and voluntary agencies? Without a supportive environment most innovation will eventually retreat into habitual behaviour.

20. Summary It is a model that emphasises the ‘Why’ and ‘How’ rather than the ‘What’. We feel that an enormous amount of ideas are generated around different types of interventions in an effort to initiate changes of behaviour in this client group. An equal focus on our motives and devising more effective ways of delivering services would generate greater success. The model is based on a foundation of three practices: • Reflexive Practice: The ability to consider a variety of influences in decision making, including personal history. • Non-oppressive Practice: being able to approach all relationships with an awareness of possible prejudices. • Multi-Disciplinary Practice: The ability to think and act professionally in a variety of disciplines. • The model then emphasises the importance of human qualities, such as Honesty, Integrity, Trust and Resilience, that are critical to service delivery and yet not the focus of any practitioner or policy maker training. • Theories devised by academics, researchers and practitioners around the subject of children and families also deserve consideration. Theories such as attachment, attunement and brain development should shape the delivery of services. • The model focuses on the application of the above, underlining aspects such as evaluation, training and professional supervision. • Finally, the model underlines the importance of appropriate service delivery structures and other contextual influences to ensure effective outcomes for vulnerable children & families.

21. Implications for Individuals • Practitioners have to be emotionally literate. • They need to respond rather than react. • They need to have a wider knowledge base than their professional role suggests. • They need to actively cultivate human qualities and demonstrate them within professional boundaries.

22. Implications for Individuals (2) • They need to understand the benefits of working in a non-oppressive manner. • They need to feel confident about exposing their vulnerability around inherent prejudice. • Some of them need to aspire to become a new type of professional – the multi-skilled practitioner. • They need to be responsible risk takers.

23. Implications for Organisations • What would an emotionally literate organisation look like? • Provide access to knowledge, training and structures that would support the practitioners. • Create a work environment that is sensitive to practitioner vulnerability and insecurity yet still insists on personal & professional development. • Create a training structure that produces the multi-skilled professional. • Create ways of bench-marking the new cross-disciplinary competencies. • Manage staff against a firm theoretical and practical model.

24. Implications for Policy Makers • Create service delivery structures that incorporate the multi-skilled professional into teams supported by other practitioners that may well be specialists. • Create networks for collaborative partnership work to evolve, whilst having integration as an ultimate goal. • Investing in specific types of training to support the new structures, philosophies, theories, and practices. • Highlight the differences and relationships between targets and Key Performance Indicators, in order that it is the work that is the focus, rather than the diversion of meeting targets.

25. Quote "I feel with some passion that what we truly are is private, and almost infinitely complex, and ambiguous, and both external and internal, and double- or triple- or multiply natured, and largely mysterious even to ourselves; and furthermore that what we are is only part of us, because identity, unlike "identity", must include what we do. And I think that to find oneself and every aspect of this complexity reduced in the public mind to one property that apparently subsumes all the rest ("gay", "black", "Muslim", whatever) is to be the victim of a piece of extraordinary intellectual vulgarity." Phillip Pullman

26. The Future…. • Europeace Youth Org • Double Helix

27. Client Group Europeace Youth Assessments: Educational Therapeutic In conjunction with Family/Community and other Agencies Involved. Schools – Complementary/ Alternative Post 16 Services – Further Education Colleges Vocational Centres Refugees & New Arrivals Youth Offending/YOIs Fostering & Adoption Services NEETS Prison/ers Long Term Unemployed Local & National Education/Health/Social Services

28. Negotiate Service Response E. P. Y. Choose Appropriate Menu for the Student Individual, Family & Community Assessment, Engagement & Therapeutic Support Teaching & Learning Qualification E-Learning Mentoring Advocacy Referrer Student Family Key worker Employer/Volunteer/Community Mentor • Using the wider existing network • Review & Response of initial Assessments (3 per Yr)

29. Employers: Training Participating Progression Work Experience Research Interviews Shadowing Colleges & Universities Progression Resources – Source of mentors Wider Network: Tried and Tested Collaborations National Organisations Consultants NGOs and Community Groups Implementation of the Menu Prisons Progression Resources – Source of mentors

30. Output Key worker Supporting 60 Children/ Young People/ Adults Employer/Volunteer/Community Mentor Transition to Further Education, Appropriate courses (including devising them) Employability ,Higher Education or Training ,

31. Underpinning this…… Methodology –Europeace Framework Training and Supporting of Staff & Volunteers Creating and maintenance of Networks Devising new methods and interventions

32. Double Helix Double Helix is a newly set up not-for-profit company, designed to work in close collaboration with its sister charity, ‘Europeace Youth’ (EPY). Whilst EPY will focus on delivering innovative and transformational services to vulnerable young people and their families, across the UK & Europe, Double Helix will design, manufacture and market products that will be used by practitioners and students connected to EPY and other organizations working with vulnerable client groups.

33. Examples of DH Products… • Life Double Helix • Learning Double Helix • Oppression Double Helix • The Triangle of Interaction • I’m a Client: Get me out of Here

34. Thank you very much and please stay in touch… Brian De Lord – CEO – Europeace Youth Bdelord@europeaceyouth.org