Psychologists help youth club support young men affected by offending
Neil Puffett
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Trained psychologists were based at a youth club in Haringey to provide counselling and support to young people and staff.
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The service helped youth workers support young people to tackle issues around violence and adverse childhood experiences
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An evaluation found a wide range of benefits, with young men reporting a greater awareness of their mental health
ACTION
As part of efforts to encourage marginalised young people to engage with mental health support, clinical psychologists began working at Bruce Grove youth club in the London borough of Haringey for two days per week in October 2019.
The specialists, employed by Project Future, an initiative run by charity MAC-UK alongside Barnet, Enfield and Haringey NHS Mental Health Trust and Haringey Council, worked with both young men and the staff at the youth club.
The aim was to support young men at the centre who had been impacted by youth violence, offending and social exclusion and may have been exposed to significant deprivation, social and racial inequalities, and adverse experiences early on in life.
An equally important element of Project Future’s role was supporting youth workers and managers’ practice through training, consultation and practical support.
Akin Akintola, a senior youth practitioner at Bruce Grove, says his team was attempting to find effective ways of supporting young people when it came across Project Future.
“The young people we work with wouldn’t go to CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services) and those types of organisations even if they were referred,” he says.
“When we do refer young people on they don’t attend any therapy. They don’t understand therapy.
“We approached Project Future to see how they could get involved in the services we offer young people. Our idea was to do something light touch, to let them get to know the therapists.”
This took time, with relationships between the young people and psychologists typically taking six months to a year to build through a range of joint activities such as football or pool.
“Young people don’t trust just anyone,” Akintola says.
“The initial feeling they have is that everyone is going to report them, everyone is going to tell people about what they are going through.
“Unless you build trust with young people they are not going to disclose anything, no matter how difficult what they are going through is.
While the young people had a good relationship with the youth club staff, they needed to build trust with those they would disclose to, explains Akintola.
“We had to support that process,” he explains. “So we made sure a staff member was with the young people while the psychologists were there. The psychologists built up their own programmes that young people could engage with.
“We would make sure the young people were going to attend and take part in the activities that they set up.”
Project Future staff organised and ran interactive activities, often with a sporty or competitive aspect, such as an obstacle course. These activities taught young men about mental health in a fun and accessible way and encouraged them to share their feelings, concerns and worries, as well as their strategies, skills and strengths.
Engaging in this way made young men feel at ease to open up about their concerns and mental health with Project Future staff. There were also group sessions to discuss issues or difficulties as well as one-to-one support.
“The two psychologists were passionate about working with young people,” Akintola says.
“They were young themselves and were not fazed if they were insulted – they carried on working with the same young person. It made life a lot easier.”
Funding for the project, which came from the Big Lottery Fund and Comic Relief, ran out in the summer. Akintola has tried to secure further investment to continue, but as yet has been unsuccessful.
“We have tried to get additional funding but have had a lot of knock backs,” he says.
“It’s something we would like to do again and we would like to share our experience with other youth centres, to get them to work with young people in the same way.”
As part of the project the psychologists would also offer help to the staff team, to help them identify when young people were in crisis, how to relate to them, and the right questions to ask.
Staff received training on bereavement and had the opportunity to have counselling sessions with the therapists themselves.
IMPACT
The impact of the work of Project Future was evaluated by the Centre for Mental Health, which conducted two rounds of in-depth qualitative interviews and focus groups with Project Future staff, youth workers and young men.
The evaluation found that the work was highly valued and brought a wide range of benefits, with young men reporting a greater awareness and understanding of their mental health and wellbeing.
They also had increased confidence and openness to discussing their emotions and seeking help and gained access to a safe space to discuss anxieties and concerns about gangs, racism and school pressures.
One young person said: “I won’t lie, I didn’t even know what mental health was [before meeting Project Future staff].”
Another said: “When I came here, [Project Future staff] opened my eyes to something new… and now I’m aware of mental wellbeing, they’ve helped me… now it’s natural to feel upset or depressed, it’s just normal, just talk to someone about it.”
Akintola says: “For the majority of young people in the group setting the ones that we thought were not going to get good results in their GCSEs are now doing A-levels.
“A lot of them could easily come to the centre and disclose to a member of staff or the psychologist what difficulties they were having, or what help they might need, which didn’t happen before.”
The evaluation also found that youth workers highly valued the confidential emotional support they accessed from Project Future staff during the pandemic, and the youth worker team’s functioning and communication was improved through Project Future supporting staff meetings and leading training sessions.
“It made it easier for me, and I think the majority of staff would say the same thing, to be able to talk to young people after talking [with the psychologists] about our own wellbeing to start with,” Akintola says.
“If we talk about our wellbeing we are able to work better with the young people. It also helps to know the right questions to ask the young people and to be able to deal with any issues that the young people bring to us.
“It gives us confidence to talk about the emotional support we can offer.”
