Positive Futures Liverpool has recently concluded a Targeted Group Work piece with a group of eight young ladies aged between 12-13 in North Liverpool. The group intervention which targeted behavior, positive relationships and respect, lasted for six weeks and had an impressive impact on the group back in the school setting.
At the time of referral, it was agreed that the intervention would have the following core goals:
• Improve relationships with peers and adults within school
• Reduce internal exclusion / time in isolation
• Become more self-aware.
In order to meet these goals, the team at Positive Futures developed a bespoke programme of intervention to help tackle the issues head on with the group. Over a six-week period, they delivered activities and sessions around teambuilding, anger management, relationships/friendships, drugs and alcohol, unconscious basis and the consequences of their actions.
As a result of this support, the group of young ladies have now also accessed the weekly Open Access sessions at Positive Futures to continue the work they started in with the youth charity in school. This is likely to have further, long-terms benefits in relation to personal development.
They now understand that communication can make or break any relationship and how people behave around one another. The taboo topics of sexual health and drugs and alcohol misuse were discussed, and the risk involved including the risk-taking behaviors that come when intoxicated but also in teenage years. The group were shown strategies that they will hopefully implement in the future to try to ensure that they can communicate effectively and build relationships with existing and new peers as they progress through secondary school and in wider areas of their lives.
By the end of the sessions all the young people now said they trusted staff members enough to disclose information about themselves, relationships with others and would feel comfortable engaging with staff in a different setting to discuss feelings and emotions.
One young person commented that:
“The work carried out has allowed me to build relationships with my peers and rebuild those with my teachers, this has helped me stay in class more and improve my workload. Thank you so much for the support”.
Between July 2020 and March 2021, Positive Futures supported 2,274 young people through their delivery. Supporting every young person to achieve their potential remains their primary objective, and it is through their various interventions that they achieve this objective.
