Live Argyll - Community Learning Services Update
Argyll and Bute Council · 1 November 2022
Back to Bute and Cowal Area Community Planning Group — 1 November 2022 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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Community Learning Services LiveArgyll Update SAWA Project Bute. There is a children arts class –taking place at the Bank of Ideas – started on Saturday 8th Oct. The Horticulture course has now finished with the four participants successfully gaining an accredited recognised qualification. An International Day was held on Thursday 13th Oct – in Greentree Café. Food was provided by Helmi’s also participants and families from the different national groups also brought food, videos made in the video class were shown and Martin the Horticulture Tutor presented recognition certificates to the people who passed the course (Official certificates will be sent out). Children’s paintings from the arts class and also scenes of Bute painted by Vladimir, a professional Ukrainian artist, helping were on display. A bike repair class in partnership with David from the Community Learning team is planned to start in a few weeks’ time, participants will learn bike repair and when taking part can hopefully keep any bike that is repaired – the broken bikes have been donated by the police, the local bike shop and found abandoned round the island. Some of the refugees and volunteers took part in the two day apple project at Mount Stuart and also attended a dance performance there and a Blair Drummond Safari Park trip took place on Friday 14th Oct – approx. 50 people went along. Adult Learning Bute continues to support and provide the following: Weekly Drop In Learning/Employment Hub with around 6 to 8 Adults attending. Learners also have access to Laptops and Internet and can work on a variety of different including Employability and Life skills including Study and Education access to online learning and Employability Platforms. There is also a further separate weekly ICT/Digital Skills Drop In which is attended by 6 – 8 learners. In Partnership with other local Organisations Adult Learning (David) works with and supports ”The Pre Men’s Shed Project” a group of 6-8 men who attend weekly with a view to joining the Men’s Shed on Bute when this is established. They are currently working on a variety of activities and projects. Adult Learning provides support to 6 Young Adults with Autism again activities varies on the learners identified needs that are going through a transition phase from Education to developing Life skills Post School. Adult Learning continues to work with both Youth Services and SAWA providing additional support on a number of other activities. Youth services on Bute have been really busy since the summer the Youth Action Group has restarted with 14 members attending regularly and is meeting fortnightly. This group is made up of young people from the local area who wish to be active participants in the
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promotion of youth voice and youth led initiatives. They are supporting our MSYP’s and have planned the October Give Programme. They are going to be working on a project collecting toiletries for the foodbank and consulting to find out how the cost of living crisis is affecting young people locally. Bute Youth Group has taken on a slightly new look by partnering up with Cross Roads Young Carers Staff enabling more young people to attend each week this group has 25 registered young people coming along each Thursday evening from 6.30-8.30. There are free flow activities and games alongside structured activities which make links with the Youth Work Skills Frame Work enhancing youth work experience and building on core skills like team work and confidence building. They all joined in a timed challenge to see who could put duvet covers on duvets the fastest as they identified some didn’t know how to do this. Young people are responsible for planning activities with workers supporting them to enable them to happen. It is their group. They sign in each session, run their own tuck shop, they have made up group rules and selected activities that they want to do, this includes table tennis, pool, structured activities and chill out time. A Newbies Residential held in September saw 14 young people from Bute attending. The October Give Programme has attracted some new members to our service with 20 registering and attending at least two of the activities and has run 8 sessions over the school break including a reward trip to try out a new skill Ice Skating at the waterfront in Greenock. The activities have included cleaning windows and litter picking on the promenade, clearing leaves in the community garden, learning how to make soup from fresh ingredients and learning how to maintain bikes which they are planning to do up and donate back to the local community. In partnership with Rothesay Joint campus youth work staff go in to the school hub at least once a week to support secondary school pupils who struggle to manage in social areas during breaks, with anxiety or other mental health issues, to engage in full time tabled classes and mainstream pupils that require additional emotional support to stay in/ engage with school. This is part of Argyll & Bute Council’s “our children, Their Nurturing Education “(OCTNE) strategy. Rothesay Joint Campus have now achieve Gold accreditation. Adult Learning Cowal/Dunoon. A new Adult Learning Worker is now in post working part time and up and coming projects planned are a Learning Hub starting 31 October. (Learning Hubs are now established in all 6 areas of the Community Learning Services across Argyll and Bute A Pilot Project to encourage Adults experiencing Short Term/Long term Mental Health issues and challenges to come together in a safe space and will be encouraged to engage with others and also use other local Services. This is in Partnership with the local Mental Health Coordinator NHS will see a pilot of a 6 weekly sessions of activities for people referred to Adult Learning. Learners will be encouraged to decide what they would like to do for example Outdoor Learning, Confidence Building, Life and work skills and Health and Wellbeing and (Angela) Adult Learning Worker will tailor the project/activities to their Identified need. Some further “closed” weekly sessions will also be held with Key Housing
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clients/learners around the priorities within the CLD Partnership example Digital Skills, Life skills and work, Health and Wellbeing. Youth Services Cowal/Dunoon Give Programme has been running over the October holidays in both Dunoon and Bute with good number in attendance for both areas. Dunoon saw 12 young people volunteering over two days at the School Garden and they were rewarded with a trip to the Cinema and Gravity. Dunoon has a girls group running on Wednesday evenings with around 9 in attendance and is run a Young Leader and will cover topics such as Puberty/relationships/consent, Self Esteem and Drugs and Alcohol with input from Police Scotland and Project rape Crisis. 12 young people are participating in PDC (Participatory Democracy Certificate) 2credits in decision making Also in Dunoon Youth Services is working in Partnership with Active Schools and DGS on a Healthy Me programme which is running and is targeting young people who made the transition from Primary to Secondary School and have been identified as struggling with this transition. A residential also took place in September bringing young people together across all the areas who had expressed interest in the Youth Action groups MSYPs have had their last sitting end of September and the new campaign is on “Fast Fashion” and its impact on climate change.