Intergenerational experiences through befriending
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Befriending Networks is the UK's largest membership organisation. The second half of this workshop will look at what support we offer befriending services. There will also be an opportunity to discuss how intergenerational befriending can align with the Scottish Government's GIRFEC policy for children and young people." The thinking behind the latter part is to encourage participants to identify the benefits of intergenerational befriending through small group discussion and to group these under the SHANARRI wellbeing indicators. Using the language of the policy can assist in building the case for the benefits to young people and using language that educators would be used to may promote buy-in.
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Intergenerational experiences through befriending
- 1. Introducing Befriending Networks Garry McGregor Quality Officer (Children and Young People’s Services)
- 2. BN’s in 2016: an overview BNs today 230 – 250 member services All befriendee groups UK-wide 4 members of staff
- 3. BNs in 2015: our services Training Quality Award: QiB Direct member support Regional and thematic “common ground” meetings Consultancy Annual conference
- 4. BN’s in 2016: resources E-newsletter Website Service paperwork Publications and research Meeting and conference notes Social media profiles
- 5. BN’s resources Key publications: Social Media Toolkit Map of Gaps * Good Practice in Befriending Befriending, loneliness, and health: a research summary * Distance Befriending –An Overview
- 6. BN’s promoting befriending Befriending Week campaign Health and Loneliness Roadshows Parliamentary Exhibition EMBEP Cross-party groups and parliamentary committees
- 9. To contact us: www.befriending.co.uk e: info@befriending.co.uk t: @befriendingnet 0131 261 8799
- 10. Making a case for intergenerational befriending • GIRFEC • Named Person • SHANARRI
- 11. How can you use this? • Target the Named Person role-bearers in schools • Use the GIRFEC language to make the case for young people’s involvement in befriending to schools and funders
Editor's Notes
- Congratulate Odette and young people on providing fantastic support and demonstrating how intergenerational befriending can work for both young and old in their community. Introduce self and BNs : only national membership organisation with an exclusive focus on befriending. from the perspective of BNs – befriending is a supportive relationship between befrienders (usually volunteers) and befriendees (who are people living with circumstances which make them vulnerable and usually contribute to feelings of loneliness and/or social isolation). The befriending service prepares the parties to meet and then supports and monitors the relationship. Activities are used as tools to help build the relationship which is the key element of the support – unlike mentoring, where the relationship is more the tool to achieving a goal. Befriending models used by member services include face-to-face or distance and one-to-one or group. These models can be used to offer either peer or intergenerational support depending on the needs of the group being helped and the aims of the service. My role is to support our members who use befriending to support children, young people and families. So my expertise lies in befriending rather than intergenerational work specifically – though most CYP services will have older adults as befrienders and a number of older people’s services have targeted recruitment of young people to bring in an intergenerational element to their work. Specific examples of Network members we know who have run intergenerational projects are Orkney Befriending Service run by Voluntary Action Orkney, Strive Wellbeing in East Lothian and Here 2Help, run by Badenoch & Strathspey Community Transport Company in the Highlands. Contact details and links to websites for more information can be found on the Service Directory of our own website – www.befriending.co.uk
- So what is Befriending Networks: We are a membership organisation representing around 230-250 members involved in the delivery of befriending services throughout the UK. As we started in Scotland, the majority of our members are still based here. Our members support a range of groups – some are very broadly defined – such as older people or children and young people - with individuals usually identified as struggling with social isolation and/or loneliness. Other groups have more specific circumstances making them susceptible to loneliness and social isolation – people living with mental health issues, blood-borne virus infection, chest or heart disease, or being older and LGBT. Membership of the organisation costs between £75-£150 per year, with bracketed costs based on the annual turnover of the organisation. Through successful funding applications to support our work, these fees have remained unchanged for 2 years. We are a small team of 4, so members quickly get to know us and form good working relationships which are beneficial for our broad aims of: Promoting befriending as an effective intervention and Supporting services to develop their practice
- In a bit more detail, our services include: Training – we offer both site-based and distance module training around topics related to successful befriending service delivery e.g. boundaries, managing waiting lists, monitoring and evaluation. The training is Scottish Qualifications Authority credited and completion of all 9 units is broadly comparable to an SVQ4. All units are open to non-members and details can be found on our website. Quality Award – we manage the UK’s only befriending-specific Quality Award – Quality in Befriending. It currently tests the service across 9 separate practice areas. Achievement of the Award is beneficial for the service in communicating to all stakeholder groups that it’s practice has been externally assessed and has met a certain standard. The Award is becoming increasingly recognised by funders and the Big Lottery Fund have included a requirement to have or be working toward the Award for services applying to them for befriending project funding. Direct member support – we are able to support individual members by identifying resources they may need, publicising staff or volunteer recruitment needs, raising awareness of achievements and offering advice on any issues faced. Common Ground Meetings – 3-4 times a year we host regional or thematic meetings (e.g. children and young people’s services), which allow befriending service staff to get together and discuss topics of relevance – the last round allowed us to participate from a befriending perspective in the Scottish Government’s “National Conversation on a Healthier Scotland” with the collated notes feeding into the report. Consultancy – we can offer consultancy services on service evaluations, feasibility studies, facilitation at strategic planning events – just give us a call to discuss Annual conference – we now boast 2 annual conference events – one in Scotland and one in England –which bring together members around a theme for a concentrated day of guest speakers, networking and workshops – like today, just with a befriending focus.
- The resources we offer our members include: Quarterly e-neswletters summarising news from ourselves, our members and drawing attention to relevant policy areas or consultations In addition to being the site from which members download resources and publications, our website is packed with information on all aspects of befriending and also includes a member services directory, which allows visitors to identify local members and see who they offer support to. In an attempt to avoid each individual member having to re-invent the wheel, we offer a range of downloadable service paperwork, which includes sample policies, assessment templates and monitoring tools. Many of these have been kindly donated to the resource bank after being identified as good practice examples during a Quality in Befriending Award assessment of a member’s service delivery. We offer a range of publications (some of which can be accessed without membership), which collate research on the effectiveness of befriending, or offer good practice advice. We’ll take a quick look at key publications in the next slide. Notes are published from common ground meetings and a conference report is produced – so even members unable to attend can benefit from the discussions We have Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles and use these to communicate with members and the broader public – often promoting member posts so they reach a wider audience
- Turning now to key publications produced by BN’s: We have a social media , which aims to demystify using these platforms and explain what the advantages are in using them The Map of Gaps analyses the distribution of our members by Scottish local authority area and type of befriendee group supported Good Practice in Befriending covers advice on all aspect of service delivery for befriending services – the practice tips are based on the Quality in Befriending Award requirements so it can also be a valuable support tool for services preparing for this assessment Befriending, loneliness and health is a summary of academic research on the impact of befriending as an intervention and can provide useful background for funding applications Distance befriending looks at service delivery models where technology supports the relationship and the befriender and befriendee may never actually meet face-to-face The 2 asterisked publications are eamples of those free to downaload to non-members.
- As mentioned earlier, a core aim of Befriending Networks is to raise the profile of befriending. To this end we: promoted the idea of a National Befriending Week (usually early November), which has been recognised in the Scottish Parliament. In addition to members hosting events which we help publicise, we run an online campaign generating support through a platform called Thunderclap. Last year, we created a dedicated Facebook page and posted photos of people involved with befriending carrying the message “Befrienders beat loneliness” as well as asking befrienders to tell us their stories – this proved very popular and we even had photos of MSP’s bearing the message We delivered 17 Health and Loneliness Roadshow events in 2015 across the 14 Health Board areas of Scotland. These invited the audience of health and social care staff, third sector organisations and elected officials to come together and discuss, in an interactive workshop how loneliness impacts on health and what could be done to tackle it. Local befriending service members were invited to speak about their work and hold information stands. We have had 2 exhibitions in the Scottish Parliament to date, which have allowed us to directly engage with MSP’s and then feedback to our members, allowing them to make contact if their local MSP was supportive. We were lucky enough to be involved in the European Mentoring and Befriending Exchange Programme, which drew together partner organisations from Italy, Germany and Switzerland, all supporting children and young people – a report on the practice sharing and learning from these workshops along with a legacy website was created. We participate in relevant Cross-Party Groups and Parliamentary committees and most recently gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Equal Opportunities Committee on their 2015 Age and Social Isolation enquiry. We also submitted a report on our Health and Loneliness Roadshow work and have been awarded Scottish Government funding to host a national awareness raising event on Loneliness in 2016. And just to prove we do this stuff:
- This is me at our first parliamentary exhibition, with Aileen Campbell MSP, Minister for Children and Young People. She is signing our pledge to support befriending.
- Okay – let’s use the remaining time to think about how we would make a case for intergenerational befriending to funders and the education sector. Let’s start off with assuming we are talking about young people being recruited to support older people as in the model we saw earlier. Hand up anybody who knows what GIRFEC is? (It is a Scottish Government policy, which is designed to promote and support the wellbeing of every child and young person in Scotland – aspects of it became law with the passing of the Children and Young People(Scotland) Act 2014. It is principally concerned with providing an effective mechanism to offer support to children and young people who’s wellbeing is causing concern.) Hand up who knows what a Named Person is? (Every child in Scotland will be required by law to have been assigned a Named Person who has responsibility for reacting to wellbeing concerns raised about a child and coordinating additional support to address these concerns – for young people in secondary schools this role is likely to be taken on by guidance teachers – but the school should be able to advise on this and the Local authority will also have a duty to publish information on who is taking on the Named Person role) Hand up who can tell us what the acronym SHANARRI stands for? (The Government has decided that wellbeing can be broken down into 8 contributory factors: Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible, Included. Concerns around any of these which are brought to the attention of the Named Person should trigger a judgement on whether or not action needs to be taken to improve the wellbeing of the young person) So how can any of this help intergenerational befriending services, achieve buy-in from funders and education?
- The GIRFEC policy is aimed at trying to maximise the wellbeing of any individual young person in Scotland. It is often considered only applicable to those who are struggling. However, I would suggest that the key point here is the scope of the policy in applying to “every child” in Scotland. If the benefits of participation in a project for a young person, could be described in terms of enhancing that young person’s wellbeing, then this may assist in securing buy-in from the school and funders. It will also demonstrate, if you are working with young people for the first time, that you have some familiarity with the policy landscape affecting them. An intergenerational befriending project offers something which directly benefits the wellbeing of the young person, supports the Named Person in their role and through this feeds into Local Authority performance reports to National Government around their statutory obligations under the Children and Young Peoples (Scotland) Act 2014. You are even setting out your case in the language the statutory sector will be using more and more. What’s not to like?
- So what I would like us to do is in small groups, is have a think about the benefits that being a befriender in an intergenerational befriending project would bring to a young person and link those benefits to a wellbeing indicator Please use the 2-sided worksheets to make note of any ideas you have. We have 6 minutes to discuss and then I’ll ask for some feedback from the groups. Thank you very much for participating – Please feel free to contact Befriending Networks if you would like to discuss membership and the type of support we can offer in more detail. Please can I ask you to make your way back to the conference for the GWT Recognition Awards.