Salford City College students set up Facebook page

Raising Your Game launched its community impact projects in Manchester

The Raising Your Game project launched its community impact projects in June. They will see young people working together on a project to benefit their community.

The first project took place in Manchester. It saw 11 students with a learning disability from Salford City College (Eccles campus) set up a Facebook page for young people, parents and guardians to find out about activities and events in the area.

The project was chosen by the students, following a thorough selection process, which started by drawing up a list of community needs. They decided that the lack of cohesive information about activities in the local area for young people was the most important issue.

Each young person had a particular task, but they all worked together to complete the project. While Raising Your Game coordinators offered support, the students made every decision throughout the project. They benefited from talks from professionals, on subjects such as marketing and publicity, and event planning.

Ziggy Gill, Raising Your Game’s regional coordinator in Manchester, said:

The Activities 4 U Facebook page launched on 16 June 2012.

To find out more about community impact projects click here.

Raising Your Game partner will lead the consortium supporting the government’s liaison and diversion programme

The government announced, in May, that the Offender Health Collaborative, led by Raising Your Game partner Nacro, will help implement a national liaison and diversion service.

In March last year, health minister Andrew Lansley and justice minister Ken Clarke announced their commitment to creating a national liaison and diversion scheme, backed by a Department of Health investment of £50 million. Over the past year, a number of liaison and diversion pilots have been established, with a view to having liaison and diversion services at all police custody suites and criminal courts by 2014.

The collaborative, which is made up of six charities, will work with local schemes to develop good practice guidance, quality standards and workforce requirements. It will also review and test different models of commissioning and provision of liaison and diversion services.

“These services are fundamental to the identification and assessment of offenders with health needs and other vulnerabilities,” said care services minister Paul Burstow, “to give offenders the right health and social care services and to ensure that key decision-makers within criminal justice agencies have all relevant health information to make more informed decisions.”

Graham Beech, Nacro’s strategic development director said: “We look forward to developing the network and enabling early and informed interventions, based on evidence of what works and what is needed, to promote the wellbeing of people entering the criminal justice system, on the one hand, and to reduce their offending, on the other.”