Enhanced Vocational Inclusion Programme (EVIP)

We  believe  that  Resilience  is  a  key  factor  in  protecting  and  promoting  good  mental  health.  It  is  the  quality  of  being  able  to  deal  with  the  ups  and  downs  of  life  and  is  based  on  self  esteem.    

Research  shows  that  interventions  that  focus  on  improving  the  confidence,  self-­‐esteem,  resilience  &  protective  factors  amongst    people  subsequently  leads  to  either  a  reduction  of  substance  misuse  or  

the  likelihood  that  someone  will  become  involved  in  substance  misuse  behaviours.  The  move  towards  more  of  a  resilience  approach  using  alcohol  and  drugs  as  a  vehicle  for    

demonstrating  resilience  has  grown  naturally  from  work  undertaken  by  GCA  Prevention  and    Education,  with  a  range  of  target  groups.    Resilience  and  Protective  Factors  have  always  been  a  key  

consideration  in  our  prevention  and  education  approaches  towards  alcohol  and  drugs.    

OVERALL AIM • To  pilot  the  use  of  alcohol  and  drug  Prevention  and  Education  interventions  as  a  vehicle  to  

demonstrate  the  impact  of  resilience.  OBJECTIVES

• To  pilot  raising  confidence,  self-­‐  esteem  and  resilience.    • To  pilot  an  increase  understanding  of  protective  and  risk  factors  and  how  these  can  influence  

positive  and  negative  attitudes  and  behaviours  • To  pilot  new  evaluation  questions    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘We helped the girls in the group realise the importance of self esteem’

GROUP:  EVIP  (Enhanced  Vocational  Inclusion  Programme)  Hair  and  Beauty,  female  only  group.    

LOCATION:  KELVIN  COLLEGE    

PROGRAMME:  RESILIENCE  PILOT    

DURATION:  6  WEEKS  (1  hour  each  week)    

   

   

PROGRAMME:  RESILIENCE  PILOT  

DURATION:  6  WEEKS    

BACKGROUND  The  EVIP  programme  is  for  vulnerable  young  people  who  are  at  risk  of  disengaging  from    mainstream  education  and  ‘almost  all  of  the  young  people  attending  EVIP  programmes  are  looked  after  or  are  young  carers.’  Education  Working  For  All!  Commission  for  Developing  Scotland's  Young  Workforce  Final  Report  Scottish  Executive  Over  the  course  of  the  tender  we  have  built  up  an  excellent  partnerships  with  Scotland’s  Colleges  citywide  and  due  to  the  characteristics  of  the  EVIP  group,  we  agreed  to  pilot  our  Resilience  Approach  with  the  EVIP  Hair  and  Beauty  course.        

METHODS

Resilience  and  self-­‐esteem  are  potentially  complex  and  sensitive  issues  and  therefore  the  need  to  ensure  the  wellbeing  of  participants  remained  a  priority  at  all  times.  After  each  week  we  had  a  formal  discussion  about  what  had  worked  and  what  would  be  appropriate  for  the  group  for  the  following  week  (as  the  programme  required  some  thought  in  terms  of  what  can  be  realistically  achieved  within  the  sessions  while  allowing  for  fun  activities  and  ice  breakers  each  week,  to  help  ensure  the  group  felt  comfortable  with  each  other  and  with  the  facilitator,  before  discussing  resilience.)  

For  the  pilot  programme  we  started  to  develop  a  toolkit  of  resilience  interventions  and  tools  to  use  with  the  group.  This  included  some  of  our  activities  which  have  been  facilitated  and  evaluated  and  we  know  work  well,  alongside  some  new  activities  to  explore  resilience.    

 

 

 

 

 

EVALUATION

Evaluation  was  carried  out  at  the  beginning  and  the  end  to  get  a  baseline  of  resilience  and  to  see  distance  travelled,  at  the  beginning  of  the  programme.  The  programme  was  also  evaluated  through  activities  and  discussions  each  week  and  qualitative  research  also  took  place  at  the  end  of  the  programme:    

INNOVATIVE  METHODS  FOR  INVESTIGATING  SELF-­‐ESTEEM/  RESILIENCE  WITH  YOUNG  WOMEN  The  group  were  shown  pictures  of  a  variety  of  different  women  (famous  people,  successful  women,  a  mum,  a  nurse,  a  footballer)  and  had  to  decide  whether  they  thought  the  women  were  successful,  confident,  happy  and  had  high  self  esteem  or  if  they  had  low  self  esteem.  This  worked  really  well  with  the  group  as  when  they  were  asked  what  high  and  low  self-­‐esteem  was,  they  responded  that  having  high  self  esteem  was  a  negative  thing  and  something  that  they  didn’t  want  to  have.  This  was  explored  through  this  activity  and  the  group  realised  that  high  self  esteem  is  positive.      

HIGH  OR  LOW  SELF  ESTEEM    This  activity  was  used  to  explore  what  the  group  thought  someone  with  high  or  low  self  esteem  was  like:    Low:  ‘scared’,  ‘ugly’,  ‘lonely’,  ‘no  friends’,  ‘worried  what  people  think’  High:  ‘princess’,  ‘think  they  are  better’,  ‘beautiful’,  ‘don’t  care/  worry’,  ‘happy’,  ‘confident’,  ‘function’.    The  group  saw  self-­‐esteem  as  a  scale  -­‐  they  wouldn’t  want  too  much  or  too  little.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KEY LEARNING FROM OUR RESILIENCE PILOT

• Resilience  is  the  foundation  of  all  of  our  interventions    • Due  to  the  characteristics  of  some  of  the  groups  it  has  not  been  appropriate  to  

conduct  focus  groups  at  the  beginning  or  end  of  the  programme.  When  this  isn’t  possible,  we  ensure  that  we  evaluate  throughout  the  programme  through  our  activities  and  discussions.      

• After  initial  piloting,  the  decision  was  made  to  limit  the  objectives  of  the  resilience  interventions  to  raising  awareness  of  the  concept  of  resilience  rather  than  increasing  resilience  per  se.  

 

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: EVIP The  qualitative  research  with  participants  indicated  the  difficulties  involved  developing  resilience  tasks  with  the  target  group  (i.e.  15  year  old  girls).  What  became  clear  is  that  this  group  were  not  at  all  interested  in  written  information  or  aspects  of  the  tasks  that  appeared  to  require  “learning  as  such”.  “Alcohol,  it’s  dead  boring….I  liked  the  games,  I  just  didn’t  like  learning  about  it”.  However,  they  did  enjoy  the  more  interactive  tasks  such  as  the  building  blocks  task  which  aims  to  make  respondents  consider  what  they  have  in  their  life,  and  what  they  would  like  to  have.  A  clear  finding  was  the  need  to  conduct  such  tasks  using  social  and  multimedia  methods.  Respondents  appeared  uninterested  and  unimpressed  with  paper  based  tasks  (such  as  writing  a  positive  message  to  themselves)  but  said  they  would  engage  with  a  similar  task  using  an  app  or  that  they  could  complete  using  their  phone.  Thus,  key  learning  from  this  programme  is  the  need  to  revisit  tasks  using  more  innovative  and  media  methods,  to  keep  young  people  engaged.  The  research  also  highlighted  that  resilience  is  a  difficult  concept  to  introduce,  with  respondents  expressing  difficulty  completing  the  tasks  including  e.g.  what  they  think  about  themselves,  their  confidence  or  their  plans  for  the  future.  These  are  perhaps  new  concepts  to  many  respondents,  who  have  not  previously  undertaken  self-­‐reflection.  This  has  to  be  continually  considered  when  further  developing  resilience  tasks.  “You  just  don’t  know  what  to  write….I  just  didn’t  know  what  to  say”.  “Sometimes  you  don’t  know  how  to  explain  things,  situations”.  This  task  also  emphasises  the  need  to  conduct  further  evaluation  with  different  target  groups,  to  specifically  enquire  which  type  of  method  of  examining  resilience  would  be  most  effective  for  them.  

WHAT  WE  DID:  IN  PICTURES!    

   

Timeline     Protective  message  

   

Timeline   Timeline  

   

Goggles  activity   Attitudes  

   

Goggles  activity   Goggles  activity  

 

   

Timeline   Timeline  

   

timeline   timeline  

   

Protective  Messages   Protective  Messages  

   

Protective  Messages   Drug  Categories  

 

   

Drug  Categories     Icebreaker    

   

Icebreaker     Rope  Challenge  

   

Rope  Challenge   Rope  Challenge