OCR and ESRC Festival of Social Science

Description of Activity

Presentation titled: Working with young people who have been in and out of prison. This was an overview of voluntary work carried out by Simon Edwards and his wife Linda over a five year period, which aimed to develop relationships with young people in a council estate area near Brighton in order to help them find pathways to work and support services. Drawing on the work of Freire (1972) and his dialogic education model Simon and Linda developed trust with the young people by driving a youth service mini-bus, which had rear seats replaced with coffee tables and chairs, onto the estate every Friday evening and invited young people aged 15-18 for a hot chocolate and chat. This coincided with street outreach work and visits to families and young people in prison. Over five years 20 young people engaged the project and applied for and raised £4,000 for positive activities including a residential trip and numerous one day trips. The underlying principle was to only focus on the good and positive activities the young people were doing, trust what they said about their realities and use this as a starting point for planning for the future.

Period	11 Nov 2016
Event type	Conference
Location	Cambridge, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National