The A Team Youth Club

What did you do/ what are you doing?

Give details of the service / project or intervention The A Team Youth Club is a joint project run by the Complex and Severe Learning Difficulties Team and the Youth Service in Blackpool. The group meets at Blackpool Boys’ and Girls’ club, which is a youth club, on alternate Tuesday evenings from 6.30-8.30 unless the group are going on a trip out, for instance, to the cinema when it would be a longer evening.

If the group are having a night at the youth club then it starts with Circle Time when staff take time to explain what’s going to happen that evening in terms of the activities on offer. Any news is shared and the young people can report back on things they’ve been doing. If the group are having a night out then they will still meet up at the youth club and have a briefing before going out so that the young people are prepared for exactly what’s going to be happening that evening.

On a typical youth club night there are a number of activities on offer. For instance there might be a sports night, there is a big gymnasium at the youth centre and someone may come in to teach archery, table tennis, snooker, or some other indoor game, the group have also had a circus skills teacher in. There is also a craft room for art and craft. Obviously this is really important as not all children like to go into the gym so there have to be other activities on offer.

The group also do hobby nights, where young people can bring in their own hobby to share with the rest of the group. That might be a computer game, a jigsaw, cooking, snakes and ladders – anything the young people are interested in doing in their spare time at home. On these nights the computers are accessible, usually it’s a golden rule that they’re not.

At the youth centre there is also a little café so young people can bring money in to spend on drinks and snacks. The group sometimes have birthday parties or themed parties and if so then they usually provide food that fits in with the theme.

The group was initially set up for young people with Asperger syndrome which was identified as a core group for whom there was very little provision either for young people themselves or their families in terms of short breaks. The group now includes young people with more complex autism. As the group is active and there are a number of external trips it doesn’t meet the needs of every child with autism but does offer a specialist youth club provision to a wide range of young people on the autism spectrum.

What age groups do you work with?

The project works mainly with 11-25 year olds.

Young people’s attendance at the youth club also gives parents or carers a short break.

Where you are based?

Blackpool

What did you want to achieve?

The initial aim was to fill a gap for young people with autism especially those at the higher end of spectrum. Jacqui, another colleague who was a family support worker, and a parent all sat down and thought about what they could do about this gap and started a small club. They then got in touch with the youth service who initially offered a room and then a youth worker to help run the club.

The club was aimed at those young people who had tried mainstream youth clubs and failed miserably and ended up feeling more isolated that before they’d tried. It was designed to give them an opportunity to get together with their peers in a setting where they would feel comfortable and wouldn’t be ostracised for being different.

To what extent did you meet these outcomes?

As the youth club has matured and developed it has more than met these aims. A lot of young people say, ‘I’m going to meet my friends’. These are young people who don’t have friends at school or college but at the youth club they do.

This has developed since the inception of the youth club when young people were initially very much doing their own thing individually. Some wouldn’t even come into the room for circle time at the beginning. One young person spent his first four sessions under the snooker table but as he became more comfortable he started to join in and he had his 18th birthday party at the youth club and brought a cake in.

What is the impact on the Children / Young people?

Observable in the setting and reported back from parents is a real growth in confidence, and a growth in friendships. Obviously this doesn’t necessarily always transfer across to other settings. But at the youth club these young people have the opportunity to have successful peer relationships which they may not have experienced in any other environment outside of their homes.

As time has gone on it is not just that young people are more confident about coming to the club they have really made it their own. They named it, they decide what they want to do. In 2009 they had their first weekend away. Jacqui managed to secure some funding and took the group away for an activity weekend in Appleby. The idea came from the young people and although not all of them wanted to go for many of those that did it was their first time away from home. The outward bound instructors were superb and did a lot of team building games and other activities which centred on relying on other people, asking questions and lots of social interaction. This meant that the group not only had fun but also the opportunity to practice skills which may not come completely naturally to them.

Obviously there was a lot of preparation around food, sleeping and sleeping arrangements and toileting and medical arrangements. At the end of the weekend there was a big brother diary room. The young people were clear that they’d loved it and wanted to do it again.

The things that they highlighted wouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone who has gone away for the weekend with a bunch of teenagers ‘having fun at night’, ‘sleeping in a room with other people’. But these were things that this group generally hadn’t done before, things that most young people take for granted.

In addition to the impact on children and young people there is also an impact on parents who will often take the opportunity of dropping their child off to stay behind and seek advice from Jacqui about an issue. The youth club also gives parents a short break. For this reason the group has received some of the funding for this years weekend away from the Blackpool Aiming High for Disabled Children short breaks funding.

Initially the youth club was once a month, parents asked for more saying that the young people really got a lot from it and missed it and wanted to come more often. In response to this the group was made fortnightly. Parents and young people would really like it to be weekly but there isn’t enough youth work staff and volunteer time at present to make that happen.

What difficulties did you need to overcome?

The only initial difficulty was winning over some people who didn’t understand why ordinary youth clubs weren’t working for these young people.

‘Someone said “you talk about inclusion but this isn’t inclusion it’s exclusion”. Jacqui has had to explain that this is about a positive social experience for a group of young people who might otherwise not have one.

The group does sometimes offer ‘reverse inclusion’ opportunities where young people have wanted to bring a friend or a sibling, and that’s been allowed. This has worked really well and the other young people have really enjoyed having them.

On an ongoing basis careful consideration needs to be given to referrals to the group to make sure that the reasonably delicate group dynamics are not upset. For instance the group received a referral on one occasion from a young person who was not on the autism spectrum but instead had emotional and behavioural difficulties and this was very difficult for the young people and not right for the individual who’d been referred.

Is the impact/outcome sustainable?

The Club is Youth Service core-funded so is sustainable. The Youth Service have provided a youth worker and a minibus for trips out.

The Children’s Youth Council in Blackpool have also given some funding so that what’s on offer can be extended.

Scale of work

An average of 20 young people attend the youth club each week out of the 25 on roll. Although all activities are chosen democratically by the young people there are still some that are less popular than others. For instance some young people don’t like the cinema so they don’t come.

What are you most proud of?

‘When it was the weekend and all the young people did so well. We’d done all this preparation but I was still worried that there would be problems. That someone would want to go home or would really struggle with being there. But that really didn’t happen. They were really challenged by the outdoor pursuit workers and they really took up the challenge.’

Jacqui feels that the young people’s membership of the group enabled them to extend their comfort zones considerably. They were able to provide each other with support so although the situation was strange they could support each other effectively.

Were all of the stakeholders views of the outcomes positive?

Jacqui receives referrals from agencies and local authority departments across Blackpool with many coming from CAMHS and the youth service. All stakeholders are positive. The Local Authority produces a newsletter that goes out throughout Blackpool and reports on the group’s activities and successes. It’s really important that stakeholders understand what the group is about and who it is aimed at to ensure that the right referrals are received and the group carries on working. These are young people who have often been damaged by experiences they’ve had in the past and it’s vital that they are made to feel safe when they come to the A Team.

What would you like to improve?

Jacqui would like to make the club a weekly service. Looking to the future she also feels it would be good to have outreach from the mainstream youth service so that where possible the young people could move into or also attend a mainstream youth club.

What aspects of what you achieved can be passed on to others?

Ideally continuity is needed. Parents move on as their children grow up and a group like this needs to have one person who can drive it forward and keep checking that the standards and goals set are being met.

Partnership working has been key to the success of this project. Jacqui has provided a lot of training for the Youth Service but in addition has learnt lots from them about listening to and involving young people, planning with young people and then evaluating. These are techniques that she has carried over into the rest of the service.

Supporting Quotes

‘The best time ever.’
‘John never stopped laughing.’ ‘We had fun.’
‘Lots of laughing, everything was good.' It was brilliant.’
‘Boys’ and Girls’ Club was brilliant, we had the time of the century.’