REACT Services

Community Groups: REACT delivers support to Community groups, these groups can have a specific purpose...

Counselling - One to One Support: What happens in counselling.  In a session you meet with a counsellor who helps you...

Peer Education: The recent Consultation Peer Educators Team gave this group feedback about their year working with REACT.

Workshops: What happens in a workshop. Our Project Worker who is also a counsellor uses exercises to help explore problems...

Community Groups

REACT delivers support to Community groups, these groups can have a specific purpose, but have invited REACT to deliver specific support work, to help achieve their aims.

We worked with a local employment company who supported young people with multiple complex issues, who had been excluded from school, or were in the More Choices Group.  In one group each of the young people in the group had parents who had mental health and addiction problems.  This had impacted on their mental health: they were unable to cope, were stressed and were displaying problematic behaviours impacting on their future potential.  After attending the group to talk about these issues, the staff were delighted with the trainees progress, they were now able to communicate with staff and had started to interact with learning and training programmes.

REACT can assist Community Groups to support and enable vulnerable young people to achieve their potential and improve their future outcomes.  The groupwork helps them to talk about and resolve emotional issues it develops their insight and self awareness. Often they are caught in a negative cycle and exploring new possibilities helps them to realise they have choices.  We find young people cope better, reduce stress levels, begin to take responsibility for their learning and improve their training options and improve future outcomes.

Counselling – One to One Support

What happens in counselling?  In a session you meet with a counsellor who helps you to feel comfortable and makes it easy to really say what you feel.

Jodie recently attended and agreed to talk about her experience.

Hi Jodie why did you decide to ask for one to one support?
I wanted to come to REACT because I can talk to a counsellor and know that I can talk about things that bothered me in confidence.

What did you want to discuss?
I wanted to discuss personal things that bothered me and things I couldn’t tell anyone else.

Did you talk about other things?
We talked about school work; I got really stressed about this and wanted it to be perfect. My friends bothered me at times and I did not know how to cope with them.  Things had happened at home that was difficult, my mum wouldn’t let me see my dad.

Did it help to talk with REACT?
Yes it helped because I could talk about stuff that I couldn’t talk to anyone else about.  I realised I could stick up for myself with friends. The family stuff – well I felt more confident about talking to my mum afterwards, I thought my mum would hit the roof, but talking to T (the counsellor) I realised that I could cope if my mum was angry and she helped me to find ways to talk to mum. My mum was great when I shared my problems with her.  It is not always calm but things are better.

One to One helped me because it let me worry less about things and I don’t bottle up stuff as much.

Would you come back again if you felt you had some problems?
Yes I would love to come back, I thought T was very easy to talk to and she helped me with a lot of things  I feel more confident about things and can even talk to teachers easier.

Peer Education

The recent Consultation Peer Educators Team gave this group feedback about their year working with REACT.

What skills did you learn from your involvement?

1. ‘Active listening.  So much more to it than you think.’ 
2. ‘We learned about TRIOS and TRIADS, body language, monitoring & mirroring the person you’re speaking to, keeping eye contact and all that.
3. ‘It is really important to think about your expression, try and keep it neutral and keep your composure no matter what they’re saying.’
4. ‘Biggest thing was not to pre-judge people, which was hard at first but got better at it.’
5.  ‘Also learned we do judge, whatever, but to recognise that.’
6. ‘Don’t pigeonhole people or stereotype, labels are lazy thinking – you have to see past this.
7. ‘Understanding conscious and sub-conscious motivations and expressions was really good.’ 

What was it like running the sessions?  What do you remember most?
The consensus was that the groups they delivered sessions to were generally responsive and most there “got into it.  “Doing the play was probably the least thing that I enjoyed as I felt a little embarrassed at first and didn’t think youths would enjoy it but they did so it made it easier to perform”.
“At first visiting youth clubs I wasn’t too sure about it but the more I did it the more I started to enjoy it”.

1.  “I liked meeting loads of new people, especially the folk in this group.” (‘AWWW!’ said the rest!)

What do you think you gained personally from the experience as a whole?

1. ‘I got so much out of this.  I didn’t appreciate so many people needed so much help.’
2. ‘Got to understand how different and complex relationships are and all the kind of problems that can happen.’
3. ‘I thought it was just going to be something to do after school but once it started I realised this isn’t just something you do to kill time.  It took thought and quite a lot of commitment, although it was fun and I really enjoyed it.’
4. ‘Saw relationships are the cause of so many problems that come out in other ways – especially drink and drugs
5. ‘Also violence and depression.’
6. ‘It was good to hear others’ opinions and outlook on life – it broadened my experience.’
7. ‘Didn’t appreciate how much others need support through this project and things like it.’
8. ‘I think I learned about what it means to support people and what difference it can make – basically it stops stuff going round and round in your head.  Clearing it out, saying stuff out loud can help you see it and think about it clearly.’
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Workshops

What happens in a workshop. Our Project Worker who is also a counsellor uses exercises to help explore problems or things like not feeling good about yourself. Most young people love these workshops and say it has made them think about things in a different way

Jason recently attended one of our workshops, he agreed to an interview to tell people what happened.

Hi Jason – tell us a bit about the workshops?
There were six of us in the workshop, they lasted 1½ hours each and I attended 6 sessions.  At the start, I didn’t now all the guys there and was worried about what would happen.   I had been asked to come by my teacher and I agreed because I knew I had to start facing up to some stuff.

Before we started we had to agree not to tell any stories outside the group, about any group members, which made sense, cos I wouldn’t like folk to talk about my stuff.

Why did you decide to come to the group?
Problems at school with my attitude, I know deep down that this was true, but it took a lot to get me there.

What did you talk about?
Being ANGRY, FAMILY, FEELING BAD

How did it help?
Made us more confidential you sort problems easier. My dad had died and talked about this, I didn’t know it was affecting me so much, we did exercises and stuff to help. I realised this was making me angry and then at school I was made out to be the bad guy, I missed out on things. I want my life to be better than this, and think now I’ve sorted myself out it will be.

What would you say to someone who was thinking about coming to the sessions?
Yeah definitely – the counsellor was VERY COOL
Sorting problems out.