Listen Up - Social Welfare Portal

listenup!Chapter 8 | 63Taking work experience at the organisations“Helping out as a volunteer enables me to makeother young people’s experiences more comfortableand better.”Young personMost of the organisations involved in this projectprovided a range of opportunities for young peopleto undertake work experience within the organisation.These included helping out with administrative tasks;handing out information leaflets to young people;helping with events and activities; peer mentoring;and assisting in the running or delivery of drop-in orgroup work sessions alongside staff.“I feel like one of the staff – they put me in charge ofdrop-in, which is every Tuesday.”Young personCase StudyOver the summer months, Community Linksin Canning Town ran a project based on theBBC TV programme The Apprentice. Overthe course of eight weeks, young peoplecompleted tasks from different aspects ofservice delivery, and one young person was‘fired’ each week. In the end, there werethree winners, as the judges could notdecide between them.Each of these young people won a week’spaid work in the project at junior workerrates. This type of activity helped youngpeople to build up valuable and transferablework-related skills. The project was sosuccessful that there are plans to run iteach year at the same time as the BBCprogramme is on television.At Support @ The Junction, at The Junction inColchester, a small group of young people weretrained by an external researcher from Anglia RuskinUniversity’s Health and Social Care Departmentin Chelmsford to conduct an evaluation ofthe organisation. This involved assisting in thedevelopment of the evaluation tool, as well ascollecting data from young people and staff. Suchopportunities help young people to develop skillsand knowledge to fulfil their potential for futureemployment.The need to maintain confidentiality regardingother young people accessing the organisation canoften place limitations on the type and level of workthat young people can undertake as volunteers forthe organisation. It is particularly important thatinformation regarding young people is protected. Itis not usually appropriate for volunteers to be givenany kind of information about other young people.Staff said that if it was thought it would be beneficialfor a volunteer to be, for instance, made aware of ayoung person’s diagnosis, then the young person’spermission would be sought before any informationwas disclosed to the volunteer. In addition, allCase StudyCommunity Links in Canning Town ran a juniorworker programme for young people aged15-18. Workers were paid £10 per day. Theywere given small tasks and responsibilitiesso that they could gain experience in theplanning, delivery and evaluation of sessions.One worker supervised a drop-in session oncea week where young people could come intothe project for practical help, such as withusing the internet. Young people felt that thiswas part of a wider policy of encouragingthe ‘older’ young people to help support theyounger ones in accessing the service.