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Young people visited the North York Moors and other areas to learn about the environment and gain new skills
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The scheme has prompted the charity is to deliver more outdoor activities and increase school-based nature sessions
ACTION
For many children and young people, restrictions imposed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic severely hampered access to the outdoors, particularly disadvantaged groups who may not have a garden or live in urban areas.
In response to this, Redcar and Cleveland-based youth charity Kidz Konnekt teamed up with Sport England’s You’ve Got This project and the North York Moors National Park Education Service to take children from areas of high deprivation in Teesside on day trips into the national park as part of a five-week summer scheme in 2020.
The charity has run summer holiday programmes for more than 16 years but modified it to become a fully outdoors programme for 2020 in light of the pandemic and the lack of outside activity.
“The focus of the programme changed due to the pandemic, the pressures young people were under and what would work best for them under the restrictions we were facing at the time,” explains Alan Lonsdale, youth development manager at Kidz Konnekt.
“A full outdoor programme is not normal for us as we usually have a blended approach of which outdoor education has been a part.”
Lonsdale says the enforced lockdown had a significant impact on young people in the area, with many children becoming isolated, disengaging from their social groups and education and “spending too much time online to try and fill those gaps”.
“Dependent on the family at home situation, some parents were not letting their children leave the house at all,” he adds.
“We could see the impact lockdown had on those young people.”
A total of 70 places were available for children and young people aged between eight and 17 on the summer 2020 scheme.
Kidz Konnekt were able to identify around 60 young people who would benefit the most from the programme based on those they were already in contact with through online virtual youth work sessions that had been launched during the first national lockdown. The remaining 10 places were taken up with referrals from parents or schools and places marketed on social media.
For the duration of the programme young people were split into six groups so they could complete activities in Covid-safe bubbles on a rotational “carousel” basis – spending five hours a day four-days-a-week across a range of venues.
In addition to the North York Moors – where typical activities included learning the history of the moor and the local environment, learning about nature, and map reading – other locations included woodland, where children and young people took part in orienteering, survival skills or camp craft; locations on the coast for water activities and the charity’s centre, where archery or a mobile climbing wall were among a activities on offer.
“The main goal was to get young people outside and enjoying themselves with their peers doing physical activity that stimulates them in a social and educational way,” Lonsdale says.
“On the first day we had children turning up in tears. Some were pale and withdrawn or reluctant to be there and unsure about engaging with the workers. Very unusual behaviour compared with what we were used to.”
“To help them relax we instilled initially some rules and regulations – we had to let them know they were safe in relation to concerns about catching Covid – they were quite fearful of that.”
Discussion work into the impact of the pandemic had already been conducted with young people through the virtual youth club meeting that had been going on since the start of lockdown.
For the outdoor summer scheme this focus on improving wellbeing went further. Each of the six groups was assigned with multiple leaders who were responsible for several children each. Discussions about participants’ frame of mind and wellbeing were then conducted on both an individual and group basis.
“I’m a big believer in the impact of going out into nature, engaging with other human beings walking through woodland or the hills as having an immense inner self impact at a biological and physical level,” he explains.
“Within a few days being with us and being outside, going walking with their friends and talking, and relaxing in those green spaces that we were taking them to, they were queuing up outside each day before we even opened the doors. They quite quickly reacted very well to the style of work.”
IMPACT
No formal evaluation of progress has been conducted, although anecdotal story books have been created to chart positive outcomes, which according to Lonsdale include improvements in emotional wellbeing, social interactions and emotional awareness.
Joe Whittingham, outdoor activities officer at Kidz Konnekt says children became far more confident over the course of the programme.
“To start with they were not able to talk to each other in a positive manner. There were a lot of short tempers. But there was a lot of confidence building and the young people came out of their shells over the five weeks,” he says.
A further five-week summer scheme was held in 2021 along similar lines to the 2020 programme. The plan is to continue in the future with outdoor activities envisaged to make up around 60 per cent of the schedule – compared with the pre-pandemic model when it made up 20 to 30 per cent.
The summer scheme forms part of the overall offer of Kidz Konnekt’s outdoors programme, which also works in a number of schools in the area (see below).
GROWTH FOR SCHOOLS OUTDOOR EDUCATION PROGRAMME
Kidz Konnekt’s outdoor learning staff, who have a background in both alternative education and outdoor activities, work in schools on a daily basis with around 300 children a week. Schools incorporate activities into half-day sessions as part of the curriculum, with programme staff also training teachers how to deliver the work themselves.
Sessions include “rewilding” work where trees are planted or wildflower meadows are created to provide habitats for birds or mammals, as well as team-building and adventure activities, with a shifting focus depending on the season of the year or curriculum subjects being studied.
The work is funded partly through existing grants provided to Kidz Konnekt and partly by the schools themselves, although schools will be required to foot the full cost from the next academic year once existing grant provision ends.
Alan Lonsdale, youth development manager at Kidz Konnekt, explains that the programme is an educational tool in its own right, but it also supports the child’s education on a wider scale.
“Children get half-a-day a week with us,” he says. “Working on a half-term basis they get four school site-based activities, then one session per half-term they get a community-based activity where they go to a green space such as a park, an allotment or a woodland and engage in activities such as team-building or knowledge about the outdoors, or they could be doing some green space development such as rewilding or cleaning out ponds. And one session per half-term is a more adventurous day, taking them off-site all day to the local environment somewhere on the coast, or up into the hills to do some rock activities, or woodland-based activities.
“We’ve got this to the point where we are being re-booked into schools for the whole of next year. Our input is now not being seen as a bolt-on, it is actually being written in as part of that school’s curriculum.”
