Origins of the Futures Programme

Leeds Futures Programme

Final Report of ‘Futures’ Pilot Project Gypsy Roma and Traveller young people aged 16 – 19

The ‘Futures’ project was designed to provide 10 Gypsy Roma and Traveller young people aged 16 – 19 with a paid course which would give them the opportunity to re-engage with education and develop their confidence and self-esteem.

This project reached completion on the 18th December, 2007 after 8 weeks.

From the core group of ten students, a mixture of local Gypsy Roma and Traveller young people aged 16+, attendance and commitment to the Course was very good – the two students with young children found it rather harder to attend all the sessions but when present, were valuable and enthusiastic members of the group.

The Monday morning sessions of the ‘Go For It’ programme – involving a trainer delivering a self-development interactive package aimed at increasing self-awareness, confidence and self-esteem continued during the 8 week course. The group grew in confidence, as the trainer reported “the group worked together well – this became more and more apparent as the weeks progressed with discussions becoming deeper in both meaning and content.” However, language and literacy skills did present some difficulty in accessing the student manuals – although the students were “very articulate in the discussions much preferring to talk rather than write.” One of the Roma students, more fluent in English, acted as a translator for the other Roma students which was a great help with the more complicated concepts in the programme. The trainer concluded that on the whole the students seemed to enjoy the programme, gaining a good understanding of the concepts, interacting and attending well. In conclusion, a modified version of this programme, taking the above information into consideration, could be utilised in further courses.

The Tuesday morning sessions, delivered by tutors at the Leeds Central Library in the ICT suite continued to prove extremely popular with the students. The basic ICT training, eg. email and internet usage, and completion of learning logs was extended to include work with digital cameras, photography, and Studio 12 workshops where students produced music/their own DVD’s. The evaluation and monitoring of this input by the Library Service has continued throughout the course and the students were filmed and their comments/ feelings about these library sessions recorded during the final session. The Library Service has also facilitated an ICT ‘drop in’ session for students to continue in January 2008. The students seem very relaxed and happy now in the library surroundings and hopefully this will impact on their library usage city wide. As the City Art Gallery is joined to the library, several students have also used their lunch break to view the Art Gallery on their own initiative with very positive comments.

Four sessions were held at the Leeds College of Art – ceramics, glass, jewellery making, use of digitally produced photographs to print on own T shirts, all of these activities proved popular and seemed to provide a ‘creative’ balance to the programme. It also provided the students with an opportunity to discover new abilities developing their sense of competence and self-esteem. This was definitely seen in one session when a student who was rather shy discovered a talent for jewellery design and another student showed a high ability level in usage of large equipment/design creativity in the use of glass. Another important element of the sessions in the Art College was that the students became confident in using the shared student areas with other college users and one student made enquiries about possible future short courses at the college.

Connexions / IGEN / Leeds Careers Service provided an afternoon input and whilst this session was delivered in an interesting and interactive way, the students, in general felt many of the options were not really relevant to them as individuals – separate Careers advice would seem to be a more useful perhaps, on future courses. However this did provide an important inter-agency link for the GRTAS and highlighted the differing needs of our students to the Connexions organisation. This can now be followed up individually as we mentor the students in the future.

Leeds Youth Service also delivered an enjoyable activity based session in the afternoon which the students all engaged with, had fun and enjoyed. The aim of this session was to strengthen group cohesion and trust and also the trainers talked about city-wide facilities for our students in their local areas. There was also a discussion about volunteering opportunities with the Youth Service. Again the implications for further work and liaison between GRTAS and the Youth Service were emphasised.

Another lead speaker from the Gypsy Roma Traveller community delivered a most interesting and informative account of his family history and work and difficulties / opportunities with the settled community – our Roma students, in particular, were fascinated by this opportunity to hear a Traveller from a different country relating his most valuable experiences.

In our final two days of the ‘Futures’ course several students and staff travelled for the day to Dublin and visited Pavee Point Traveller Community Centre, were an extremely valuable session took place where ideas and experiences of all the participants were shared. Great interaction took place, as there were groups of Roma and Irish Gypsy Travellers and even some family links were discovered!

We had a walk around Dublin town Centre and shared a meal which seemed an apt place to begin the closure of our ‘Futures’ course.

Our trainer, who delivered two initial sessions regarding team-building and personal awareness issues, agreed to help facilitate the final session and record her observations later. She noted that “ the group had changed loads since the first couple of weeks, they seemed not only more comfortable with each other, but also so much more able to be open to other people coming in. They seemed more sociable and found it easier to talk in front of the group. There seemed to be genuine warmth and friendships and care throughout. They were obviously proud of their own personal achievements and the achievements of other group members” .

All students were presented with Course Completion Certificates and were hugely cheered by all the group) ... there was lots more cross communication” (between the Roma and English/Irish Gypsy Travellers). The students comments and evaluations of different sessions were quite variable as obviously different experiences were viewed in an individual way. The Library sessions were consistently mentioned as being a very important element of the course.

In conclusion:

Most of the students had experienced difficulties and negativity in school due to cultural, social and school structures. They didn’t feel included perhaps because the curriculum was not meaningful for them, or quite often due to language or literacy problems. Our Occupational Therapy student astutely noted that students may have previously “developed routines at home whereby they had very little structured activity. These routines offered little opportunity to try new experiences and develop self-esteem through occupation ... people need challenging and meaningful productive roles to develop a sense of competence and self-esteem. Without these roles the students would experience decreased motivation and confidence so they would find it more difficult to visualise themselves accessing mainstream courses or opportunities, particularly when combined with performance deficits (such as concentration difficulties, poor literacy or English language problems and reduced social skills).

Hopefully the ‘Futures’ Course has provided the students with the opportunity to re-engage with new learning, and progressed that essential development of their confidence and self-esteem that will truly enhance their lives both socially and in their occupational prospects for the future.

Ann Leach, Saskia Keon, Peter Saunders
GRTAS – January, 2008

Thanks

Many thanks to the Agencies/ Services/ Contributors which have made the delivery of the ‘Futures’ Course possible:

Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds Library ServicesLeeds College of Art, Leeds Youth Service, Connexions/ IGEN/ Leeds Careers Service Key Speakers - Tommy Collins, Richard O’Neil, Michael Collins, Moira Stone – ‘Go For It’ facilitator, Lydia Quelch – Occupational Therapy Student Abi Horsfield – Group/ Activity facilitator, All members of the ‘Futures’ Steering Group,Eugen Balaz – staff member of GRTAS.

Key Recommendations

The Leeds ‘Futures’ project is continued and expanded for this group and for others who could not attend due to limited places
Key funding streams identified to develop this cross agency partnership approach both here in Leeds and nationally
This model be adapted by NEET and national employment/ training initiatives to ensure vulnerable groups are included and successful

Further information

Educational Links

Local and National Educational Organisations

Organisations

Organisations and bodies working for and with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people.

General Links

Art, entertainment and more.

Photo Shoot

See the Futures students on a photo shoot as part of the training programme.

Interim Report

A report from halfway through the pilot.

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