Weekly Update 05.10.20

Last week’s downpours didn’t stop staff and volunteers Martin and Darren heading out on Detached. Young people were met despite the wet weather and were excited to be given care packages that we have been giving out across the past weeks. Funded by the South & Vale Community Safety Partnership, these have contained various items to support young people in taking care of their mental health and wellbeing. Skipping ropes were particularly appreciated by the young women Lisa handed packages out to Tuesday evening, practicing their skipping skills round the Orchard Centre.

To then sum up the online support and activities we’ve offered the past days:

• 1:1 check-in’s – important as always for reassuring young people that staff are there if they fancy a chat and helping us remain aware of how young people are doing, particularly important for those known to us who have not tended to be met during Detached. 
• Fitness tutorials – Lisa’s essential pieces of equipment this week = a tea towel and slidy floor!
• Body image worksheet – from educating young people on the misleading nature of photoshopping to encouraging thinking around the beauty in everyone’s bodies being different, another great worksheet from Charlotte. 
• Instagram polls – slightly different polls were posted last week, to learn more about how young people have benefitted from our Children in Need funded Dinner and Lunch & Debate activities since going online (our polls and worksheets). It was brilliant to receive the feedback that many young people feel content posted has helped boost their confidence, wellbeing and communication skills.
• Participation – to ensure the young people are fully connected to the running of things at TRAIN, another feedback gathering exercise was held to gather questions they wished to be asked in interviews for our new Youth Work Manager post – thank you those who shared their thoughts! 

Further multi-agency meetings were also valuable in supporting our awareness of current issues around risky behaviour in the area, to inform our work and help us collaboratively support each other in supporting young people involved. 

We hope you all have good week’s and that the rain doesn’t get you down -now it’s Autumn let’s get all the hot chocolate in (although not to encourage any panic buying!) 

As always, we would love for you to please spread the word about our provision, to support us in making as many 11-18 year olds in the area* aware of the support they can access from us as we can.

Take care and please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions for us over the coming days. Thanks so much for your support.  

Best wishes, 

The TRAIN Team

*our provision is open to 11-18 year olds living in Didcot, Harwell or attending a Didcot school.

If you would like to hear more about our current provision and how young people can get involved, we encourage you to take a look at the following page. 

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