Aberlour Crannog Central Project Practice Profile
The PINS team met with project staff at the Aberlour Crannog Central project. In discussion with the team – Anne Marie, Roberta, Annette and Iain – more about the work emerged.
Firstly, a short project profile:
Crannog aims to support young people who are repeatedly excluded from school, or at risk of being accommodated by the local authority. Crannog works to keep young people in their school and community. Crannog offers:
- A safe welcoming place to go.
- A confidential service.
- Help and support to return to school/education.
- Help with problems young people are experiencing at school.
- Help to prevent young people being accommodated by the local authority or placed out of their community.
- Emotional support.
- Advice and support for families.
- Group work, youth award schemes and activities.
The service is delivered across Dumfries and Galloway from three Crannog bases. These are in Dumfries, Annan and Stranraer. Each Crannog team is lead by a Project Manager and also qualified staff with a wide range of skills and experience in working with young people. The service is run from project bases, as well as in school or the best place to meet young people’s needs.
And now more from the interview:
PINS: Could you introduce yourselves?
Anne Marie Buydn: I am the Crannog Central project manager.
Roberta Evans: I am a social education worker within the crannog central project and my remit is specifically substance misuse.
Ian Patterson: I also work as a social education worker with the Crannog Central project and my remit is youth justice.
Annette Bell: I am also employed as a social education worker.
PINS: And could you tell us a little about the service you provide?
AM: We work with young people who are at risk of school exclusion and also those who have been formally excluded. We work with young people between the ages of 12-16 but on occasion we will continue to support young people who are post 16. Some of the young people we work with are looked after by the local authority and our maximum case load for any worker is four.
Our programme is flexible and responsive to the individual needs of the young person. For some, this might mean just popping in to school and seeing them for 1 hour twice a week. For others, it might involve a much more intensive piece of work. The small case load is useful as it allows us this flexibility and gives us the time we need to devote to the young people we work with.
Once we have received a referral we spend a period of time, usually around 2 months, doing an assessment. This tends to involve a lot of information gathering and finding out as much as possible about the young person as we can. The main reason for the assessment process is to determine where the needs of the young person lie. We speak to the school, to the family, to social workers if they are involved, to the young person and any other organisations or people who play a significant part in their life. We often find that a ‘can of worms’ is opened at this stage and we get a much better understanding of the issues involved in the young person’s life.
After we have gathered information we go on to design an intervention programme with the young person. What is imperative at this stage is involving the young person in designing the programme and also having their full backing in terms of work we plan to do with them. Our aim is to help the young people we work with both socially and educationally. This most often involves a combination of activities and is underpinned by the ASDAN programme which helps to develop key life and education skills.
ASDAN is useful because it allows us to do interesting and engaging activities with young people in a manner which is focused and helpful in terms of bringing them on. For instance, as part of ASDAN we can take young people on educational trips to museums and historical sites and we can also work on their life skills through cooking and learning about things which are important when moving toward more independent living. We mostly work 1 to 1 and find this effective in terms of impacting positively, especially in terms of their behaviour. On occasion, we will also work with a group of young people, this often involves an outdoor activity such as hill walking or water sports.
Practice Issues
PINS: What are the current pupil inclusion practice issues for your agency?
IP: Partnership working can be difficult. In some respects the priorities of schools and educational departments are slightly different from our own. They have different pressures and have to work principally for the majority, not the disruptive minority. This can create some problems although I would point out that in my experience schools are becoming more child-centred and willing to help the most vulnerable young people typical of those we work with.
AM: Reintegration is an issue. It can be a real set back for a young person if they are trying to improve their behaviour and working really positively with us but the school does not want them back. We understand the schools perspective and their reluctance to take a young person back who has created a lot of problems but school is generally the place where the young person wants to be. Moving schools and starting in another school creates its own tensions and can lead to further isolation for the young person involved.
AB: One of the main issues I think we face is parenting. Often the parents of the young people we work with live in very difficult circumstances and have to deal with a lot of issues on a daily basis. They can often present as very needy and we have to be careful in not getting drawn into trying to deal with all of their problems. But it is clear that the problems and circumstances parents face translate to their children and it is clearly a factor in terms of their behavioural problems in the school, at home and in the community. On occasions when I work in the family home with parents and young people you can see how tense and problematic relations have become. The contrast in how a young person behaves at home or in school and how they will interact with us is often quite dramatic. They can be confrontational and aggressive in school and at home and while we see some parts of this their demeanour and attitude is often much better and positive in interacting with the workers at Crannog.
Good Practice
PINS: What is the best way to positively impact on the life of young people and limit their chances of being excluded?
AM: I think we work well with schools. They recognise that we are trying to make everyone’s life easier. If you can get schools on board and work out a reduced timetable with auxiliary support in classes for a young person who is struggling, coupled with our intervention, then we have found that they often cope much better. The young person needs to be engaged in the process and happy with decisions that are being made.
RE: Building positive relationships with the young people we work with is central to improving their behaviour and reengaging them around their education. Above anything I think this involves spending quality time with them, listening to them, being empathetic, consistent and non judgemental. You have to focus in on their interests and try and build on these. Making sure that they feel valued and that they are involved in planning their work plan. Making sure that they are taken into account in decision making is also important. Often they do not have any adult other than their Crannog worker who takes a positive interest in them. In most cases they are receptive to this and really enjoy the attention and feeling valued.
AM: Trust is a big part of it. We recently had a case where the police wanted to come and arrest a young person we work with at the Crannog project. They asked what time he would be at the project. We let them know that this was not a good idea as it would compromise the trust and sense of security which he felt in us as workers and in the Crannog project as a place. We managed to negotiate with the police and they agreed to pick him up when he was not at the service.
AB: What I have found is that once I have established a good relationship with a young person then I am in a better position to work effectively with them around their behaviour and education. When a young person recognises that you value and respect them, they also begin to recognise that you have different standards and expectations in terms of their behaviour. If you are going to take them out in the car you can say, “I am not taking you out if you behaved like last time, it is not acceptable”. If you don’t have that relationship with them then this type of statement will most often lead to confrontation - as often happens in school with teachers. But once the relationship is there then they are generally very responsive and willing to modify their behaviour.
AM: Having a clear plan and setting goals is useful. If you can agree achievable targets with young people and they can stick to them then they can come on, impressively so. This can be from things such as ‘not swearing at a teacher’ to more significant goals such as ‘wanting to join the army’. It gives you something to build on and a focus for engaging them.
RE: Again, I would talk about our relationship with schools. One of the things which we do which is really helpful for them is to deescalate confrontational situations. They will sometimes phone us and ask if we can take a certain pupil, who we work with, out of school because they are not coping and being disruptive. We are happy to do this, it helps in our relationship with the school which is important when we are directly advocating on a young persons behalf and trying to get the school to continue or increase support for them. It also gives us the opportunity to take the pupil out of school for a period of time to cool down. This is often a good opportunity for us to try and engage them about what has caused the confrontation and how better to deal with difficult situations.
Developing Services
PINS: What do you think needs to be done to improve the outcomes for the young people you work with?
AB: I think that schools need to be more creative in terms of engaging pupils and providing them with opportunities to succeed. Schools are too academically orientated. There is a need for more practical and informal options for young people within school. Many of the young people we work with hate school because they find it difficult and restrictive. They act tough and confrontational within school because they get frustrated and feel that they are bound to fail. However, when we work with the same young people outdoors or in an environment they feel more comfortable in their whole demeanour and behaviour changes. They are far more relaxed.
AB: In my experience I would say that schools would also benefit from independent young people’s workers who are based permanently within schools who could provide support when needed to pupils who are struggling. The young people we work with often don’t have the best relationships with teachers or support staff within school. They also tell us that guidance staff are often too busy and don’t have the time to deal with their problem when it matters to them. Instead they are offered an appointment later in the week which is of little use.
AM: I would say that in our experience the young people we work with can and often do manage to cope with school. But this requires proper planning and support from all those involved. With our input, a manageable and agreed timetable, the support of a classroom assistant and a willing and supportive teaching staff, then we have found this brings the most successful outcomes. Importantly, the young person and their family must be on board and willing in terms of planning and sticking to this plan.
AB: I have some concerns in terms of support for those who are post 16, especially those leaving the care system. We would never stop working with someone just because they no longer fit into our normal age remit of 12-16, but I think there is a lack of support for young people after the age of 16. Young people who leave care often have limited family support to fall back on and tend to be quite vulnerable. This is something I think needs looked at. Some young people do not feel confident enough to go straight on to college.
More about ASDAN at:
