Looked After Children
As part of the YMAZ programme for 2011-2012, CYMAZ has developed strands of work targeted at young people in or leaving care. Our main partner in the development of this work is Carefree. Combined with our experience of working with young people in a range of challenging circumstances, the partnership seeks to build and complement provision.
Carefree works with vulnerable young people in and leaving care. Their mission statement is ‘giving young people in and leaving care the chance to do things for themselves and others’. They support young people to learn to mentor their peers and enable them to take a positive role in their community, thereby avoiding the service dependency that many young people leaving care are predicted. Carefree has a strong focus on arts and art delivery with these most disadvantaged young people because learning to be creative and achieving a piece of art work can help build resilience to the frequent moves, emotionally painful experiences and poor educational outcomes that this client group can face.
On a ‘music week’ during the summer with young people from Carefree a worker said “I saw massive improvements in ‘J’, more confidence, singing really confidently and taking on a role playing the keyboard – incredible to go from yesterday when she was really reluctant to share, to singing a solo on her own today” (Claire Knight, Youth Worker at Carefree)
Project/activity details
The overall aim of this work is to provide music, radio and performance opportunities as part of existing provision for looked after children with the ultimate aim of embedding music and demonstrating its power as a tool to engage young people and develop music, personal and social skills.
The objectives of this work are;
- To provide a structured and accredited (for example, Arts Awards) learning environment where young people develop music and radio skills which support and complement in school learning
- To increase confidence, aspirations, personal and social skills of young people thus increasing their life chances
- To platform the music and voice of young people via CYMAZ Radio and other performance platforms across the county
- To work with agencies to provide access to information, advice and guidance about progression routes and opportunities available
- To provide opportunities for young people to develop leadership skills, becoming peer mentors or trainee music leaders
- To enable children and young people who are looked after, experience EBD or are excluded from mainstream education to access a high quality service which will enable them to achieve positive outcomes
Each strand of work is working towards the culmination of groups/ensembles ready to perform and the development of a new music/choir group for looked after children, their carers and siblings.
‘The CYMAZ Carefree choir as a structured, task led group has been a positive and useful addition to our groupwork activities. There have been a variety of positive outcomes, young people have had to develop as a group using discipline and focus to work together. Everyone is enjoying the group and having fun. Apart from the 1 or 2 already confident members almost all have grown in confidence significantly both in singing and for some talking to the group as a whole. There has been some lovely supporting and encouraging each other within the group, as well as some challenging of peer behaviour when distracting from task and focus. Singing ability on an individual and group level has already significantly improved in the few weeks we have been running. This Friday we are performing in public for the first time and have a few more opportunities for performance in the pipeline!’ (Claire Knight, Youth Worker at Carefree)
Watch this space for case studies and more detail of this work.
For more information about our work with Looked After Children contact Emily@cymaz.co.uk
