Donald

News from Going Forward – Part 2

02 July 2020

Going Forward – meeting the challenge of Covid-19 head-on

In our June blog, we highlighted our delight in being able to mark the third anniversary of the Going Forward project by announcing that we had been successful in securing funding for our Going Forward programme until 2023 from The City of Edinburgh Council Community and Families Fund.

Whilst it is fantastic to know that the success of Going Forward will continue for at least another three years, we also know that the Covid-19 lockdown has presented a huge challenge for the youth work organisations and the young people that we work with and support.

As soon as lockdown became a reality, it was clear that the Going Forward project would need to make some big changes in order to respond to some major needs.

In delivering over 550 sessions for approximately 50 organisations across the Lothians over the last three years, we have physically been in the room with small groups of young people. If that was no longer possible, something would need to change quickly, and in a significant way.

We set these changes in motion with regular conversations with our main Going Forward partner organisations. The key things to emerge from these discussions were:

  • Recognition that lockdown was likely to lead to increases in risk taking behaviour (alcohol, substances, online safety, gambling) so it was imperative for us to maintain session delivery.
  • Session delivery would need to change from our ‘traditional’ 90 minutes/two hours in the same room with young people to 30-40 minutes online.
  • Whilst focus on risk taking behaviour was clearly important, keeping young people involved with sessions would also indirectly help to address issues such as boredom, loneliness and social isolation.

In response, we overhauled the session plans, information and resources that we use in our normal Going Forward sessions and developed a portfolio of short activities that could be delivered to small groups of young people via Zoom. These are all now available for free from the Fast Forward website:

So far, the response to these online sessions has been excellent. We are delivering 4-5 sessions each week for small groups of young people. There is, of course, room for this to grow, as demand increases.

Feedback on the new session format has also been great:

Cheers Donald for Zoom yesterday – the boys certainly are enjoying the sessions – if they weren’t they would tell us. Subjects are very useful and I’m very thankful and delighted with how it’s going. Look forward to next session – same time same setup.

Our Going Forward online sessions and resources are continually developing based entirely on what workers and young people are telling us they want to hear about. In continually reacting to the needs and wishes of the organisations and young people that we work with, we are now in a strong position to deliver fun and meaningful sessions, whether we are physically, or virtually, in the room with young people.

We are able to do that because the young people we work with want to be there, we meet them where they are at and we are absolutely clear that they are helping us as much as we are helping them.

Want to find out more?

If you would like to find out more about the Going Forward project, or discuss ways in which we could work with your organisation to develop and deliver a programme of sessions tailored to the specific needs of the young people that you support, simply e-mail the Going Forward team, or give us a call:

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