This has been an exciting and challenging year for Families Matter. We have adapted to the changing demands on our service. We are developing new projects and continually looking for new ways to serve the community and meet the needs of the most vulnerable in our society. It is a privilege to be accepted into people’s lives when they are struggling and get along side them in whatever way we can. I continue to be grateful to the fantastic team of volunteers, without them much of the work would be impossible.
Mental Health Service User’s Group
Over the past year this group has continued to flourish. I am very grateful to Madeline Slade (with support from Helen Turnpenny) for standing in for me with Sue Guymer since October while I have been undertaking my second year of study at Southampton University.
The group continues to offer support to parents who have mental health problems. The group, as in previous years, has seen its fair share of successes. We have supported a lady through a very stressful pregnancy (our fourth since the group began). We have seen a number of parents move on in their lives including one lady who has got married and is very happy. She came to us very depressed and isolated. Another, who had very complex issues, who has gained control of her life, lost loads of weight and feels very positive about the future. She has been able to leave the group while always knowing she can return if she needs to. This knowledge is hugely important to our parents. When recovery begins, statutory agencies close their cases and in order to access services again they have go back through the system.
It still amazes me how supportive the parents are to each other, especially new members. They invite them to activities during the week including our parent and toddler group and I know Gill and Val often see group members on Wednesdays.
Supporting Parents of Teenagers/ Youth Offending Team, Wessex Parenting Programme Courses
We have run four SPOT/YOT courses in partnership with the Youth Offending Team. These have proved very successful. Our on-going relationship with Helen Hills from the Youth Offending Team continues to be a blessing. We work very well together and have helped 26 families since the last AGM. Amalgamating the two courses has meant that we have added very relevant homework that is completed by both the parents and teenagers. We have found that relationships have strengthened as parents begin to listen to their teenagers. We have a number of ‘On the Right Track’ parents that have completed the course.
Anger Management Groups
These groups have been a challenge this year. We need to explore how these groups run and seek to change the aspects that are not working effectively. A job for the summer I suspect!
3 C’s (coffee, cake and chat)
This group continues to serve the community by offering a warm and friendly welcome, a listening ear and of course CAKE! Some parents find toddler groups overwhelming or scary places, this group provides somewhere parents can develop friendships and gain confidence. The staff are always looking out for new faces, introducing them to other parents, making them feel welcome. Parents have remarked to me how it is a joy to attend these sessions. A number of the parents have now completed the ‘Time Out for Parents’ course. I would like to thank all the volunteers involved for their hard work and dedication without them this group would not be able to run.
On the Right Track – Parent Support
I have had contact with 6 parents of On the Right Track (OTRT) children working in school with Joy. They attend; Manor Infants, Cadland Primary or Blackfield Primary schools.
I have had contact with 8 parents of children working in school with Bev. They attend either Hythe Primary or Waterside Primary schools.
This contact is sometimes one-to-one support; other parents have attended a parenting course. On occasions I attend ‘team around the child’ meetings with other agencies seeking to assist families with differing needs.
Deliberate Self-Harm Group
I am continuing to work with CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service) and Brookvale to set-up a support group for parents of children engaged in DSH (deliberate self-harm). This is an area where there is no support currently offered and cases are on the increase. We are hoping to secure funding to run an 8-week course, two or three times a year. This will offer parents support, time to talk to each other and educate them regarding DSH.
Healthy eating group
We are hoping to run courses for children who are obese and their parents. They learn to cook cheap, nutritious food together. These sessions will be fun as well as educational. We are hoping to change the way both parents and young people view food.
Emotional First Aid Course
I am currently undertaking a course entitled Emotional First Aid for Children. Focusing on emotional distress in children and young people and how to recognise the signs and assist them to access appropriate services.
Mental Health Awareness in Children and Adolescents.
Joy and I are hoping to attend a 14-week mental health awareness course in September. The course has been well received and we believe it will be of great benefit to our work with both children and parents.
Personal Development
I have now completed my ‘Foundation Degree in Health and Social Care’ and hope to complete the ‘top-up’ to Honours Degree next year.
Studying, working and family life have required a juggling act from me this year, but I am lucky to have a very supportive husband and family, as well as encouraging colleagues. I know I wouldn’t have been able to achieve these goals without them.
I would like to thank the trustees/ management at Families Matter for their support and the opportunities they have given me. I would also like to thank the members of the church who have prayed for me and for the project. Of course, none of this would be possible without God at the centre.
Sharon Ellery
Development Manager
Management note: We have confirmation that Sharon has not only completed her degree course but has also graduated! Congratulations Sharon!
Administration
The office is working well for the project workers providing for all their admin support needs. My thanks to Gay who files, records, prints, folds and sends countless items. The emails and telephone calls are also dealt with swiftly. We are also indebted to Dawn Pearce who folds leaflets at an amazing rate and sorts them into envelopes as requested.
We continue to make payments, bookings and arrangements for Families Matter and ensure the treasurer is provided with the income and expenditure month by month for the accounts.
We have again been able to arrange a crèche to support the work of the Project workers in courses and support groups. We were saddened at the death of one of our faithful crèche workers, Mary Brown, after a brave fight with cancer. We were pleased that Anne Sanders was able to join Val Blasby, Gill Tabenor and Irene Bowles in this valuable service. We also have other volunteers from our church who fill in occasionally.
It is a pleasure to support the work of Families Matter and to look after the communication with other organizations, professionals and clients.
Joan Shewry
Trustee & Administrator
On The Right Track
On The Right Track is much valued by the schools in the area. Despite the fact that there are now ELSA trained assistants and Jigsaw workers, On the Right Track workers still have a large number of referrals. It was felt that this was largely due to the fact that we look at the whole family keeping in contact with the parents, and informing them of relevant courses when appropriate. During the year we have employed Ruth Prevett to help with home visits.
We still work very closely with the Handy Trust. Candy Huxham and Ann McDonald have been doing Golden time in some junior schools so that she can get to know the children who need a little extra help when transitioning from Junior to senior school. They also run weekly support groups in Applemore, Hardley and Noadswood schools. ‘Sports in the park’ is very well attended during the summer holidays and is a very useful way of keeping up contact with the young people over the long summer break.
Joy re-worked the ‘re-tracking’ material at the beginning of the year making it more relevant to the children.
Bev and Joy started the year with a meeting in the various schools, meeting with the parents and answering their questions and concerns.
Joy Drake works in:
- Blackfield school, working with 1 child in year 3 and 10 children in year 6
- Cadland Primary, where she works with 1 child in year 3, 2 children in year 5 and 5 children in year 6.
- Manor infants, working with one child in year 2
- Fawley School, no referrals this year.
The children will be taken in small groups to visit their chosen senior school.
Bev Eyres works in:
- Hythe Primary school, working with 10 children in year 6
- Wildground Junior school working with 10 children in year 6
- Waterside Primary school, working with 10 children in year 6
Ruth Prevett has visited parents for both Joy and Bev since January this year. This is not an easy role and will be reviewed in September this year.
The children seen by our workers have presented a number of different needs. A significant number are on the Autistic spectrum. It has been felt that training in this area would be very valuable.
The children enjoy the time spent with their OTRT worker and find it really helpful to carry on seeing them at their chosen senior school. The benefit of the programme is commented on by the staff in the senior schools. Sadly Orchard junior school have not taken up the offer to work with their children and this is noticed by the Senior School, when they identify needy children who would have benefited by the support offered.
Sharon has run SPOT courses over the year which have been well received,
The work with the Praizin’ Hands puppets in schools is expanding, Bev has written new material for a number of subjects over the year, and is currently working on others. The topics dovetail with the schools Personal Social and Health Education curriculum, and the schools appreciate the presentations greatly, they enable the children to learn in a fun and different way.
A big thank you to all the team for the high level of commitment they show to the ‘On The Right Track’ project.
Baby Clinic
Baby Clinic was bringing between 30- 40 families into the Church on a Tuesday afternoon. We built up a good relationship with a number of the families and were able to encourage the young mums attending the Young Parents group to see the Health Visitors. Sadly in January the Health Visitors announced that the clinic would be moving to the Waterside Children’s Centre and operating on a Tuesday morning. Daphne Aldridge and Bev Hall, who managed the clinic at Church, decided that they would go with the clinic to the Children’s Centre to maintain the Families Matter presence. This seems to have been much valued by the staff at the centre and the Health Visitors. To start with numbers were very low but that has built up considerably over the months. The parents are changing so they do not remember what it was like at Cornerstone, but Daphne and Bev miss the groups that used to stay and enjoy a drink while discussing their daily lives, and where friendships were formed, the Children’s Centre is too small for this to happen in the same way.
Drop-in for Younger parents.
This Group is run in conjunction with the Handy Trust. The group operates every Tuesday afternoon from 1.00pm-2.30pm, under the capable guidance of Candy Huxham and Louise Richiardi. During the winter it takes place at Cornerstone, in the summer they move to Jones Lane using the Youth Club building but also enabling them to use the outside play facilities.
The group has 6-7 parents who attend regularly, though they are in contact with 11 young people.
The group helps to build the young peoples confidence and self esteem. One young mum is now going out to work. Two young mums still at school are being mentored by the other mums in the group.
Very recently Candy has been approached by Hampshire County Council to discuss the Councils review of the sexual health strategy within schools, a meeting took place on Tuesday 16th June involving the young parents.
The group is now working closely with the Children’s Centres and the centres are beginning to refer young parents.
Special Needs Report
We have three groups that cater for parents of children with special needs.
SWANS This group covers all children with additional needs.
WASSP this group is for all parents with children on the Autistic spectrum
ADHD group for parents whose children have ADHD.
SWANS. The group is slowly changing. But we do find getting referrals is not easy.
The parents still get together once a month but now the children are at school the crèche is not needed at present during term time. We have a group of 4 mums who are extremely faithful to the group and help with the organisation.
Each holiday we run activity mornings which are highly valued by the parents. The children and their brothers and sisters do fun activities while the parents have coffee, then they all come together and share lunch.
We had a Christmas party joining with the WASSP group.
For these activity mornings we need quite a high number of helpers, which is not always easy, but we always seem to have just enough for the number of children on the day.
We are at present organising a sponsored walk wheel chair push round Hythe to raise money for Families matter to help cover costs for our various activities.
It is hoped that over the coming year that we can have a pamper day for the mums, and bring in an occasional speaker.
WASSP. This group continues to meet regularly every week. 5-10 parents value the time to come and just chat together, sometimes just to have a good old moan!
The group is in contact with about 30 families via the internet, and during the holidays numerous activities are planned by WASSP and the Autistic society when they are able to meet up with everyone.
Steffe James- Brown, had to take a back seat running the group over the year, due to other commitments. Ann Wright has carried on this responsibility, very ably, in her absence.
On occasions a speaker has been arranged for a Thursday morning.
ADHD group. This group is run by Joy Drake. Cathy Laver- Bradbury has run two courses for this group over the year. These are always well received and are well attended. As yet the group has not managed to continue after the course as a support group, but the parents always know that Joy or Cathy can always be contacted if they need help.
Over the next year it is hoped to start an evening group so that Dads can also get support. Steff and Bev are hoping to get in speakers once or twice a term. This group will cover all families who have children with any form of special need.
Our special needs work is an extremely important part of the work of Families Matter.
The parents are so grateful for all that is provided. They particularly value the understanding and acceptance of their problems that is shown by all at Cornerstone.
Beverley Hall
Trustee and Line Manager
OTRT & Special Needs
Puppet Project report
The puppet project has had a busy year. We have visited a number of schools on the Waterside to put on presentations on a variety of topics. We have reached approximately 2866 children and young people with important messages on social issues and topics that encourage them to make the right choices in how they live their lives and how they can live happily and healthily.
We have provided schools with worksheets which can be used with the children, in further work on the topic. For the bullying presentation the puppet project has provided each young person with a ‘S.T.O.P’ credit style card which has a very important message on it, reminding the individual what they should do to put an end to bullying.
We have been able to lead discussions with the young people in some schools and have led groups in health days. For the younger children, we have taught them actions and words to songs, so they can feel more involved.
We have used the puppets to reach children aged from age 4 to 13.
Some topics have different script and song material, relative to the age group we are working with.
A lot of time is taken up in writing scripts, making props, backdrops and rehearsing so we can put over a professional performance and so engage the children / young people.
We have introduced new smoking presentations and worked on improving each presentation to include more visual aids.
Healthy Eating for Infant school children and pre- schools has been a new topic we have launched in July’09 and we have future bookings for this in the new school year.
The topics we have covered this year are:
- Friendships (at all age appropriate levels)
- Jealousy
- Bullying (at all age appropriate levels)
- Self – Esteem
- Racial Prejudice
- Smoking
- Talking about problems
- Healthy Eating.
If funding permits, we hope to introduce the following new topics in the coming year(s):
- Healthy Eating (for junior school children)
- Stranger Danger
- A ‘new’ Drugs presentation
- A ‘new’ Alcohol presentation
- A ‘new’ Fear of the dark presentation
- Knife crime
- Working hard = jobs
- Teenage pregnancy and sexual health
- Some of these topics have been specifically asked for by young people.
Beverly Eyres
Project Worker &
Praizin’ Hands Puppet Group
