The Choosing My Life pilot at Barton Moss Secure Care Centre shows what Raising Your Game can help your organisation achieve
Barton Moss Secure Care Centre in Eccles, Manchester, is a secure unit for young men aged 11 to 17 who are serving custodial sentences or are on remand awaiting sentencing. Over the last 12 months, the centre has seen an increase in the number of men with a communication difficulty or learning disability, so staff have had to explore different ways of working with them.
Raising Your Game’s Choosing My Life workshop pilot was the “perfect project” to give added support to these young people, as well as help improve the skills of the programmes team in working with them, according to Lisa Gray, the centre’s programme leader. “The six-week pilot involved four of our sentenced young men,” she explains.
“Although we were initially apprehensive about how the project would go, it was a massive success, with all the young men being disappointed when it ended – staff too! I saw one young person grow in confidence throughout the programme – he went from being very shy and not comfortable in sharing his opinions to being the most vocal in the group.It was a very proud moment.”
Covering a number of different topics, the programme’s main theme was rights and responsibilities. Each session started with an icebreaker, followed by a range of short, visual, hands-on activities.“It was pleasing to see the young people take part in the icebreaker exercise, in which they had to answer questions,” says Lisa. “One of them was given the question ‘what would you spend £1,000 on?’ – he said he would take his family on a holiday, as they had never had a holiday.
The fun and informative exercises allowed all the young people to have a voice and feel confident about sharing their own thoughts and ideas. “It helped the young people to see the impact of their behaviour on the wider community,” explains Lisa. “It was really great seeing the commitment shown by all the young men who attended the sessions and their thoughtfulness in some of the discussions.
“At Barton Moss, we feel that this is a project that can be delivered in the long term, and we have already planned to deliver it every three months over 2012.”