Social Work Community Support Services
The Social Work and Health support to family teams provide community support services to address offending behaviour and supporting young people at risk of being removed from their communities.
During the last year, over 100 young people and their families benefited directly from individual work programmes. These focussed on areas such as anger management, bereavement, development of social skills, life story work, substance misuse and keeping safe in the local community.
Partnership involvement in the Youth Offending Monitoring Group has led to a significant reduction in requests being received from the Children's Reporter but, conversely, means that the smaller number of requests that we do receive require a substantial package of support to effect positive change. More than 40 young people and families have accessed a service from the community support services by way of the Reporters Administration over the past year.
The support to families teams also work in partnership with the "Step Up" program in conjunction with the youth justice team and Tayside Council on Alcohol and a number of group work provisions have been delivered throughout the Angus area. These have generally been in response to a perceived need in a particular community and most recently have targeted Forfar and Montrose. Again, there is a great emphasis on partnership working with contributions from a variety of sources.
A sample program is detailed below:
Boys' Group
| WEEKS/DATES | ACTIVITIES/PARTNERS | |
|---|---|---|
| WEEK 1 | INTRODUCTION | ANGUS COUNCIL EDUCATION DEPT, CRT, TCA. |
| WEEK 2 | PICTURE'S IN MONTROSE SESSION | ANGUS COUNCIL EDUCATION DEPT, CRT, TCA, NEIGHBOURHOOD SERVICES. |
| WEEK 3 | ANGER MANAGEMENT/ INFLATABLES | ANGUS COUNCIL EDUCATION DEPT, CRT, TCA, NEIGHBOURHOOD SERVICES. |
| WEEK 4 | SESSION ON ALCOHOL AND VISIT TO FORFAR POLICE STATION | ANGUS COUNCIL EDUCATION DEPT, CRT, TCA, NEIGHBOURHOOD SERVICES, TAYSIDE POLICE. |
| WEEK 5 | SESSION AT SPORTS CENTRE WITH SNAKES AND LADDERS GAME | ANGUS COUNCIL EDUCATION DEPT, CRT, TCA, NEIGHBOURHOOD SERVICES. |
| WEEK 6 | SESSION AT REPORTERS OFFICE | ANGUS COUNCIL EDUCATION DEPT, CRT, TCA, REPORTERS ADMINISTRATION. |
| WEEK 7 | FIRE ACADEMY | ANGUS COUNCIL EDUCATION DEPT, CRT, TCA, TAYSIDE FIRE BRIGADE. |
| WEEK 8 | FINAL ACTIVITY | ANGUS COUNCIL EDUCATION DEPT, CRT, TCA. |
In addition to working directly with young people and their families, the support to family team delivers a variety of services for parents. These take the form of programmes tailored to the individual needs of families as well as the "Handling Teenage Behaviour" group work program for parents.
The primary aim of such groups is to enable parents to rebuild stable and positive relationships with their teenagers. Some of the outcomes for participants who have completed the courses have been to enable teenagers who were at risk of coming into care to stay at home, teenagers who were being excluded from school to manage their education better and teenagers who were offending to reduce such offending in their communities.
By creating a non-threatening environment that promotes learning in a fun and informal way the programmes aim to raise self confidence and to ultimately empower parents to adopt a positive approach to handling teenagers' behaviour. The courses, empathically acknowledges that parenting teenagers can be an extremely demanding, full time job whilst reassuring participants that 'there is no such thing as the perfect parent or teenager.
To date around 40 parents and carers have attended a number of groups delivered throughout the Angus area. A variety of partners have been involved in the provision of this service including the community adult mental health services and the Forfar area children and families service.