Category Archives: Children’s and Youth Work

Christmas Chocolate Sprouts

Posted on by
Post Type Children's and Youth Work
Christmas brussel sprouts

On Saturday I led the Girl Guides District Carol Service, and used my favourite Christmas illustration – Chocolate Sprouts.

 

Preparation

  • Boil the Brussels Sprouts (make sure they’re not too soft) and stick them in the fridge overnight.
  • Next morning, melt the chocolate and dip the sprouts in so that they look like truffles.  Let them set on a baking tray, then put them in small cake cases and sprinkle them with cocoa powder.

Talk

At the start of the talk, announce that you love Christmas so much, that you want to share it with everybody, and that what you have with you is something that will always remind them of Christmas day – delicious truffles!

Ask for a couple of volunteers to see if they can emulate Christmas day, by eating as many truffles as they can in 1 minute.  Build up the expectation and emphasise the need for speed in the challenge.

Once the young people start eating the ‘truffles’, they’ll realise that there’s something not quite right and their facial expressions will change from ones of sheer delight, to ones of outright disgust a they discover the sprouts. (You may want to have a plastic bag handy at this point!)

OK, so it’s a bit revolting, but here’s the point.

Ask the young people who loves chocolate, and also, who loves sprouts.

Say that Christmas, for most of us is a time of celebration, indulgence and happiness.  We love the ‘niceness’ of the Christmas season. It’s a bit like chocolate!

Go on to say that for many people, Christmas is not an easy time. For some it’s a time of loneliness, homelessness and struggle. For many people, Christmas is like our experience of sprouts – something to struggle through.

You could mention the first Christmas as an example. Mary was blessed with the news that she was to be the mother of God’s son, but probably struggled with knowing that her life could be in danger because of her pregnancy.  A classic Eastenders storyline!

Challenge the young people to consider how they spend Christmas – to be grateful for the Christmas they have, and to be mindful of those who will struggle through Christmas.

Prayer

May our lives and our prayers be like lights shining in dark places.  And may the blessing of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – fill our hearts and homes with light this Christmas and in the new year to come.  Amen.

Young people to be funded to remain in foster care until age 21 if they wish

Posted on by

Education minister Edward Timpson

Children and young people brought up by foster carers in England will be allowed to remain with families until they are 21 if they choose to under a new legal duty for councils – this is brilliant news – it was always crazy to force young people to live on their own at 18 by withdrawing their funding:

Children and young people brought up by foster carers in England will be allowed to remain with families until they are 21 if they choose to under a new legal duty for councils, ministers will announce on Wednesday.

Charities have long argued for a change in the law, which currently forces many young people to live on their own at 18. The government has set aside £40m for local authorities over the next three years to put support arrangements in place.

The decision marks a U-turn for ministers, who had previously resisted calls to expand Labour’s pilot Staying Put programme – a scheme that gives young people the option to stay with foster families until they are 21.

The Labour scheme had been piloted in 11 English local authorities since 2008 and evaluations showed that young people who stayed on with foster carers were twice as likely to be in full time education at 19 as those who did not.

Education minister Edward Timpson, whose own mother fostered 90 children, said: “I know from the many foster children I grew up with how crucial it is for them to be given sufficient time to prepare for life after care.  A growing number of local authorities already offer young people the choice to stay, but with little financial support it can be challenging for their foster families. This is a further reform to our much wider package of support for care leavers, including much greater financial support for young people leaving care at 18.”

The government will now put forward an amendment at the third reading of the children and families bill in January.

Robert Tapsfield, chief executive of the Fostering Network, which campaigned on the issue, said: “This change in the law will make a massive difference to the lives of this and future generations of care leavers in England. This issue has, however, not been resolved for young people in Wales and Scotland. We will continue to campaign for this change in the law to be replicated”.

Currently, local authorities in England fund the cost of children in foster care until they reach 18. At that point, support varies across the country. In many areas, teenagers are forced to live by themselves at an age when others would remain at home. Statistics from the Department for Education revealed only 10 more young people stayed with their foster carers after the age of 18 in 2012-13 than in 2011-12.

Natasha Finlayson, chief executive of the Who Cares? Trust, which supports children in care, said: “This represents the most significant reform to the support children in care are given in a generation.  Time and again we hear from young people who are extremely anxious about having to leave their carers when they turn 18 and effectively no longer having somewhere they can call home, especially when the average age for young people who aren’t in care to finally leave home is (at least) 24.”

A Dad for Christmas

Posted on by
Post Type Children's and Youth Work
Christmas presents

When it comes to Christmas, it might be safe to assume children will ask Santa for an extensive list of toys, games and treats.  But a survey highlighted in The Telegraph of their typical lists for Father Christmas has shown many have more serious concerns, requesting “a dad” instead.

A study of 2,000 British parents found most children will put a new baby brother or sister at the top of their Christmas list, closely followed by a request for a real-life reindeer.

A “pet horse” was the third most popular choice, with a “car” making a bizarre entry at number four.  But despite their material requests, the tenth most popular Christmas wish on the list was a “Dad”.

The survey, of consumers at Westfield London and Westfield Stratford City, found children aged three to 12 years also wanted a dog, chocolate and a stick of rock.  Traditional hopes for a white Christmas were represented by a wish for “snow” in ninth place, with sensible youngsters also requesting a “house”.

Of the top 50 festive requests, 17 related to pets and animals, with some imaginative children hoping for a donkey, chicken and elephant.

iPhones and iPads also appeared on the list, with some quirky children asking for the moon, a time machine, a pond cover and beetroot. One child asked for Eva Longoria and another wanted Harry Styles from One Direction.

A request for a “mum” reached number 23 on the list.

Band of Brothers Suit Up to Protect Bullied Kid

Posted on by
Post Type Children's and Youth Work
boys-wear-suit-ties-against-bullying

Danny Keefe, a 6-year-old boy at the Mitchell Elementary School in Bridgewater, Massachussetts, is disabled because of a brain hemorrhage at birth and has a speech impediment problem.

Regardless, Danny is a cheerful – and dapper – water boy for his Bridgewater Badgers peewee football team. We say “dapper” because Danny always wear a suit and tie, as well as a fedora, to school.

The football team’s coach always remind the team that they’re a “Band of Brothers,” and that despite his disability, Danny is one of them and that they should treat him as an equal.

So, when the football team quarterback Tommy Cooney heard that Danny was getting bullied because of the way he speaks, he rallied the troop to do something: they arranged a “Danny Appreciation Day,” where every boy in the team came to school dressed up like Danny.

Children can be mean, but these kids are awesome! Watch the video clip below by WCVB Channel 5 Boston that will reaffirm your faith in humanity:

Let teenagers have their kicks

Posted on by

Over the weekend there was an interesting article in The Guardian, on Let teenagers have their kicks. They are only doing what comes naturally:

British teenagers are an increasingly responsible and sober bunch. Teen pregnancies are at an all-time low, drug-fuelled dance culture is vanishing, careers are planned from a tender age, and preparations are made for a lifetime of tuition fee loan repayments and pension contributions. Most of the evidence shows that today’s teenagers are altogether more sensible than their irresponsible, selfish parents ever were.

But where did all the fun go? What about the naive, wide-eyed collision that is supposed to happen when each teenage generation encounters an unprepared world? In other words, I worry that teenagers are becoming prematurely middle aged.

So it was the evolution of teenagers that made us human, and do all the wonderful things humans can do, and the same remains true today. Far from being an irritating transitional phase between childhood and adulthood, teenagers represent a life-stage unique to our species and absolutely essential for its success.

… All that brain restructuring means teenagers think in a completely different way from adults – a difference that can be frustrating at times, but a difference we should cherish rather than stifle. And there are some particular features of teenage thinking we must nurture if we are to thrive in the future.

One of these is creativity, something teenagers revel in. Although their thought processes may seem disordered to the adult observer, they are especially adept at comparing dissimilar concepts to create new perspectives. Indeed, many geniuses have drawn their initial inspiration from their almost gauche adolescent thoughts. For example, Einstein wondered what it would be like to ride on a light wave when he was 16 and I doubt he could have had such a crude yet brilliant thought at 60.

Also, teenagers, as we all know, tend to take risks. Parents don’t like it, and the authorities don’t like it, yet teenagers seem driven to do it all the same. Sometimes, terrible things happen as a result of teenage risk-taking, but very often they don’t. The human mind did not evolve in a world of speeding cars, sexually transmitted diseases and potent psychoactive chemicals, and it is poorly equipped to cope with them, yet risk-taking still serves an important function. To be successful in life we have to take some risks and adolescence is when we learn what can go wrong, what can go right, and what it feels like to take a risk. Creativity and risk-taking are essential for human success and prosperity. They are not only important in the arts, but are also the key to success in science, business and the development of a civilised society. If we do not encourage our teenagers to behave like – well – teenagers, then the outlook is bleak.

… Youth is not about being responsible – it is about being young and all the enticing, overwhelming, delicious things that come with it. Life has an emotional, sensual vividness to it when we’re young and this cannot be recaptured later on. Once that is gone it is gone forever and to cloud a young person’s experience of it is unforgivable. We are consigning our teenagers to an awful, bland sensibleness. And that is simply not natural.

 

David Bainbridge is a reproductive biologist at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and the author of Teenagers – A Natural History(Portobello)

You will not have my youth group

Posted on by
Post Type Children's and Youth Work
Live-blog-purple

This morning Ian Henderson spoke about how John 10:10 reminds him of Louise Johnston a granny from Wolverhampton, who during the riots, realised her hair salon was under threat, looting and mobs were going into all the shops.  Most people hid behind the counter in those shops.  Louise Johnston cared, she stood outside her building, as thieves come to destroy her shop, she says “you will not have my shop!”.  The people look at her and think ok and move on to smash up the shop next door!

You care about your young people, you’re not hiding behind the counter like many of the shop assistants did in the Riots.  There is a thief that is coming to destroy your young people, he is trying to destroy their identity, their lives, their futures.

We were challenged to stand up and say to the devil “you will not have my youth group” – to take a stand.  As you’ve spent the weekend hearing from so many different speakers, chatting with so many other youth workers you have been challenged, inspired and encouraged not to worry about yourself, but to stand up to the devil.

What issue is it that you are standing in the gap for?  Is it pornography, self-harm, friendships, unemployment, alcohol, drugs – there are too many to mention here, but what is it that God has broke your heart for, what passion is it that God has laid on your heart?

Our prayer, our hope, is that you will take that from this conference, that you will go home and keep asking God what rules can you ignore.  In the same way David saw Goliath as a 9 foot giant who was huge and intimidating, but whilst Goliath wants arm-to-arm combat, but David says we don’t have to do it that way.  What new ways is God laying on your heart to stand in the gap, we have to do something, we cannot ignore it anymore.

123›»