yblive Summer 2009, 60 Seconds Bulletins
Incredible Years: IY- youngballymun has just completed its first full year of work. At the end of June, 130 Junior and Senior Infants in Virgin Mary Boys and Girls and St. Joseph’s Junior received their Dina certificates for completing the first year of Dina school.
Write Minded: The in-school work of Write-Minded is now in full swing! All of the primary schools in Ballymun are working on literacy across the curriculum and will be incorporating an oral language programme in September. Primary to Secondary school transition booklets have been developed by the transition working group and tested out with over 300 6th class children in Ballymun. The Write-Minded second level planning group has identified additional key areas of work that will be kicked off in September with our local secondary school Trinity Comprehensive and with Youthreach. The community & family strand of Write-Minded has started with parent and child reading groups in 3 of the primary schools. This work will be significantly expanded when the community and family literacy planning group completes its design work for this strand of the service. Write-Minded invited international literacy expert Tim Shanahan to Ballymun to reflect on our work in the light of international research and proven models of work, such as his Chicago Literacy Framework. We look forward to continuing our dialogue with Tim as the work of Write-Minded progresses.
Jigsaw-youngballymun: The Wrap Around Facilitator (WAF) programme is up and running. Trained WAF’s in 11 agencies across Ballymun - Ballymun Regional Youth Resource, Trinity Comprehensive, Aisling, Ballymun Jobs Centre, Youth Action Project, Ballymun Community Training Workshop, the Boys Hostel, Youth Probation, Juvenile Liaison Officers, Dublin City Council and Ballymun Initiative for Third Level Education – are supported by Catherine McGowan and Graham Connon in their work with individual young people. A community-wide youth mental health skills and awareness-raising programme has just started with the June 25th lunchtime seminar on Schizophrenia given by Olivia Murphy, HSE. The seminar was attended by about 40 people from a range of community and statutory services in Ballymun.
The crisis response element of the service is in the final stages of design. 5 action areas have emerged from consultations with those working with young people in crisis knitted in with a review of international practice:
(1) Leadership: community-level leadership and coordination by an individual with specific training and experience in crisis intervention;
(2) Capacity: organisational capacity building;
(3) A Plan: crisis respite arrangements and a formal programme of crisis stabilisation;
(4)Procedures: coordination of protocols and procedures across agencies and organisations; and
(5) Support: training and support for service providers and carers across the community. The design of the crisis response strand of Jigsaw-youngballymun will be completed in September 2009.
Literacivic: Literacivic is not strictly speaking a service in the sense of a defined programme of work for groups of children and families. It will rather be a strategy, or series of events, to celebrate communications, literacy, and the rights of a child in a collective way across the community.
Evaluation: Gemma Cox joined the youngballymun team as our Evaluation and Research Manager on July 1st. Rigourous evaluation is one of the hallmarks of youngballymun, ensuring our accountability in relation to our mission to deliver ‘ measurably enhanced learning and wellbeing outcomes for children and young people in Ballymun.’ Gemma will manage the range of evaluations that youngballymun will be commencing in the coming months. She will also be available to assist some partner organisations who want to integrate appropriate data collection and evaluation methods into their ongoing practice. Gemma will be out and about meeting groups and service providers in Ballymun in the coming months.
