Options+ is a Lifeskills project being delivered at Canongate Youth Project and funded by Skills Development Scotland. The programme is aimed at young people aged 16 and 17 who are typically not fully engaging with statutory agencies such as Careers Scotland and Job Centre Plus and who are experiencing a range of issues in their lives that are preventing them from moving into training, employment or education. We typically engage with young people for 4-6 months before the majority of them progress into sustained training, employment or educational outcomes. Reality dictates that some young people will require less support than this to help them get over a few barriers while some young people will require more long term support to help them overcome more ingrained issues before it is appropriate for them to progress.

What is Options+ all about?

The programme operates on a Group and Individual basis. The group based work are two full afternoons a week, typically a Tuesday and Friday from 12 - 4pm. One of these will be skills and issues based addressing issues that are important and common to the whole group. Topics include drugs/ alcohol awareness, health issues (including mental and sexual health), independent living skills, literacy and numeracy skills, rights and responsibilities and citizen issues. Employability skills are delivered in structured and motivational sessions to support participants in their progression into employment. Sessions highlight opportunities into further education, training or employment which allows individuals to identify any further support that they may require to enable them to apply for a job or access training or education and to feel confident about undertaking interviews.

Options+ visit to Hampden Stadium 2008

The second afternoon is activity based – either in-house or at some other venue. The focus here is on allowing young people to sample a range of social and challenging activities such as outdoor pursuits or sport or leisure activities. Attendance at the activity afternoon is dependent on the young person attending the issues based Tuesday group and any other agreed support or task based sessions. The activity afternoon is not simply about going to the cinema, for example. Young people decide, plan, deliver and review the activity and this process develops several skills: taking risks by sharing ideas for an activity with the group; negotiation skills and motivational skills (if, for example, only one person wants to do a certain activity, they have a choice: to accept that outcome that no one else wants to do it, or to try and change people's minds through educating other group members about the activity and enthusing them to change their minds).

Groups are deliberately small so we can do much more focused and intimate work, with this complemented by individual support on a needs-based level.

There is also room for individual support, if this is deemed more appropriate to the young person and their needs. The focus for both Group and Individual is very much on the young person and their needs to dictate the content of the sessions. This is one of the ways that make the Options+ programme quite unique in that it is tailored to the young person, rather than the young person changing to suit the group.

 

Referral System

The referral system is very open and can be made from any outside agency, a friend/family member or even by the young person themselves. You should discuss Options+ with the young person and give them a wee insight into what it’s about and then get in touch with either me, Neil Hyndman, or the Project Co-ordinator at Canongate Youth Project. The three of us (Referring agent, young person and Options+ worker) will then agree a time to meet together and have an informal chat. Usually we prefer these to happen here at CYP as it allows the young person to come to the building with someone they know which can often then make that first day on Options+ much less intimidating. We will explain a bit more about how the programme works to give the young person more of an insight and also try to gauge where the young person is in terms of their thinking around potential training, education or employment needs.

Options+ three day residential visit to Glasgow 2008

Residentials

Every year we also invite young people to particpate in our three day Options+ residential visit to another town, usually Glasgow. You can see the report on the 2009 Residential visit here and view photos of the trip here.

 

Some of our Achievements

Two of our Options+ young people, Lucy Crossthwaite and Mark Wilson, have recently completed a DVD project as part of Edinburgh City Libraries' Tales of One City series which have been posted up on YouTube.

You can view their videos here:

My Calton Hill and Dinner at the Greyfriars Mission

 

Opportunities

As CYP Training Services currently run a Get Ready for Work (GRfW) training programme from the same premises, there is a real opportunity for young people involved with Options+ to feed into specific training sessions that may be deemed appropriate for certain individuals. Careers Scotland staff are also available to support young people whilst they are on the programme.

If you have any questions on the referral process please feel free to contact myself at any time.

I would also like to make an Agency Visit invitation: if you feel it would be worthwhile for me to visit your agency, whether it be for staff or young people, to explain a wee bit more about who we are and what we will be doing, then don't hesitate to get in touch. This doesn't have to be anything formal!

Neil Hyndman

Options+