youth truth - a peer education project with young parent in lambeth
TRANSCRIPT
Youth Truth - a peer education pilot
an intensive intervention to help young and teenage parents to
• find a career
• move towards financial stability
Why trial peer ed with young parents?
• parenthood often means a surge in ambition and drive in young people who have not previously engaged with education, training or employment
• chance to get to hard to reach young people, around difficult topics of particular relevance in Lambeth
• prevent children becoming young parents, involvement in gangs, violent & exploitative relationships
Project Aims & Objectives
• Reduce risk of long term social exclusion for teenage and young parents aged 18 – 24 and their children
• Educate children and young people aged 11 – 16 to make informed choices around various risky behaviours, including:
o teenage pregnancy and parenthood
o violence and control in relationships
o gang grooming processes
• Test how a peer education model might support young and teenage parents to find a career and move towards financial stability for themselves and their families
Recruitment & Retention
• 62 young parents recruited
• 26 began peer education training
• 21 completed accredited peer ed training
Free crèche facilities and child care were critical.
Peer Ed training programme
• 5 x peer facilitation (London Youth)
• 1 x session planning and delivery practice (St Michael’s)
• 1 x preparation for work (St Michael’s)
• 1 x interview skills (Dress for Success)
• 1 x sexual health training (Brook London)
• 1 x Child Exploitation & Online Protection CEOPs (Met Police)
• 1 x domestic violence (St Michael’s)
• 1 x gang grooming (St Michael’s)
Developing work readiness
• 21 peer educators gained 3 AQA certificates
• 9 gained a further 2 AQA certificates
Those remaining NEET
“I was enjoying being a peer educator but then found I was expecting a second baby. However, I went ahead to set up an online young parent’s blog.
As a result, I was invited to be the feature parent and spokesperson for a young mums support network and Baby Bump, a pregnancy app for mobile phones, which I’m now promoting on YouTube!” Natalie
Delivering peer education
• peer educators delivered 16 sessions
• 130 young people aged 14 – 18 attended
• the most popular topic was gang grooming
“ gave me a real insite (sic) on what gang life could be like… how it starts and how to spot it.”
“the peer educators make information easy to understand”
What we learned: Youth Truth underlines …
• the importance of partnership working
• that holistic, intensive support is the only way to include the most vulnerable young parents and to ignite their potential
• young parents’ extreme vulnerability to change, whether forced (eg rehousing) or voluntary (eg new relationship)
• that we must greatly over-recruit, incentivise and find more compelling ways to explain the relationship of formal educational qualifications to better-paid employment