Our first guest blogger: Lizzie!

My name’s Lizzie and I’m the education worker at A Way Out. My official title is ‘Vulnerable Young Persons Education Development Worker’ (very long, I know)!

I’ve worked for A Way Out for 3 years now and my main role is to co-ordinate accredited and informal learning amongst our service users. I believe that everyone has the right to an education and can be educated regardless of their background, ability, situation or age. Often our service users may have had bad experiences in the past but A Way Out eases them gently back into education and in many cases a learner may achieve their first ever certificate. This can often be the start of a learning journey they would otherwise not have embarked upon!

Education at A Way Out can mean working with young people who have been permanently excluded from school, going into a secondary schools to deliver self esteem workshops and healthy lifestyle sessions, running employment courses with our adult service users or running a creative arts project with local professional artists. With me being the only girl on this team I often will do some youth outreach type work too, whether its running a girls group or helping out at a youth club roadshow!

Some proud girls with their certificates

When we run ‘education’ projects, the education side is only a small part of it. There may be other issues that need to be dealt with and I often refer people on to colleagues or outside agencies. There may be worrying stuff that is happening at home that we need to tackle or maybe on that particular day they just need a listening ear. Although we are looking to improve their education, it’s really about improving their life as a whole. So sometimes I’m a youth worker, sometimes a befriender, often it feels like I am a counsellor and sometimes I'm a teacher. You never know what each day will bring!

Improving fitness

Raising self-esteem and aspirations through recreational activities

With it being the holidays at the moment, not a lot of education happens as the schools are shut, so I've been getting up to some different things...

• We are going to start providing accreditation for our volunteer program in September! This means our volunteers will not only receive excellent, relevant training but also a Level 1 accreditation too! So in the next couple of weeks I'm going to be busy writing unit plans and workbooks. Watch this space volunteers!

• Matty (our outreach worker) and I are busy recruiting young people for our Summer Trips to Lightwater Valley, Redcar beach, Beamish Museum, a picnic in the park and some other places too! These give young people the opportunity to do something fun in the holidays and also provide time for us to build relationships with them. It gives them an experience they may not otherwise have and more importantly it takes them off dangerous estates and can give them a break from distressing home lives.

• Whilst I'm not out on trips and writing units I will have time to prepare for the next school term. We’re working in three schools in September delivering workshops on drugs and alcohol awareness, self esteem and healthy lifestyles. I’ll be coming up with schemes of work, lesson plans and material for those. One of the schools is new to A Way Out so we hope to make a good impression!

Learning about drug categories

I'm looking forward to September as lots of things happening. Hopefully we'll increase our work with young people who are at risk of been excluded and we are going to be developing our one to one sessions. I'm wanting to create a weekly education afternoon where A Way Out service users can access education in basic skills, for example in maths, independent living etc.. And chatting to a young person yesterday about healthy eating has give me the idea to run healthy cooking classes! So all very exciting stuff!

Love from A Way Out x