Things we've done in the past
The Grow Project l Future Heids and Big Heids l Leith Open Spaces Project
Leith Open Spaces Project (LOSP) was an innovative partnership between the Citadel, Lothian and Borders Police (Neighbourhood Action Unit), and Port of Leith Housing Association. Its aim was to engage ‘hard to reach’ teenagers in targeted areas of Leith, reducing involvement in anti-social behaviour and signposting them to mainstream youth provision.
Following the success of the LOSP Drop In at Pilmeny Youth Centre, which is still going strong, the Citadel received funding from the Cashback For Communities fund to establish a similar Drop In at Fort Community Wing last year.
Once again, the Drop In proved very successful. In a calendar year, we delivered 37 sessions, which were attended by 83 different youngsters. More than 60% of these stated that they did not regularly attend other youth clubs. As well as accessing workshops at the Drop In on drugs, alcohol, knife crime, and racism, Drop In members were ‘signposted’ to other services, including RUTS community groups, ‘Leith United’ and our own Futureheads provision.The project culminated in an outdoor activity weekend at Loch Morlich for twelve of our most regular attenders (subsidised by the Scottish Provident / SYHA ‘Give Us A Break’ scheme).
Although the Drop In at the Fort was not sustained, after the end of LOSP, the most regular attenders have gone on to form the nucleus of the Senior Drop In at the new Citadel. Once again, this has proved the value of the LOSP model, as a way of attracting some of the most ‘hard to reach’ teenagers into mainstream youth clubs.
The Grow Project
This project was set up with a number of partners across Edinburgh, to help young people grow 'resilience, optimism and wellbeing'. This means that young people look forward to their future and feel confident they can solve problems and make good choices in life, and have good relationships with other people.
The Citadel created a toolkit of group work activities for young people to help them develop skills and have experiences that helped them to think about things. A small group of 8 young people worked with the Citadel - 4 girls and 4 boys, all around 11 years old.
The project was closely evaluated by an external evaluator (Kim Edgar) and this showed that the young people who had some serious difficulties with relationships and expressing their feelings had improved in these areas as a result of GROW.
Futureheids
The Citadel has supported young people to make their way into adult life for many years. We began the Future Heids project to find more ways to help young people who left school and didn't find the path to employment, further education or training easy - some young people struggle to decide what they want and drop out from opportunities easily; some young people don't feel ready for the next step; and some people know what they want and need help to get there. Future Heids provided a drop-in session through a senior youth club, allowing people not in education/training/employment to talk to us about their needs, as well as keeping in touch with young people who had found a placement, to support them to keep it or to plan for change positively. As well as the drop-in, we provided group work activities to learn new skills and try new things, and we made time for 1:1 support to help people prepare for applications and interviews, or just to talk. We helped young people use other services more effectively too - Careers, Job Centre, training providers and colleges.
'Futureheids' is now 'Futureheads' to see what we're currently up to se our current projects page.
