Emily Sethi, Youth Work Coordinator and Wellbeing Practitioner for Young Devon

The young people at Sidmouth Youth Centre have been having lots of fun lately; dabbling with new and interesting ways to be creative, with cooking and crafting as the star attractions! We wanted to give our young people the chance to develop their culinary skills, explore new ingredients and cooking equipment, so we gave them the task to make cheese (from scratch!) at our Skills Night session (Tuesdays, 6:15pm-8:15pm, all ages). We then used this cheese to flavour our Senior (Wednesdays, Year 8+) and Junior (Fridays, 6:15pm-8:15pm, Year 6/7) Youth Night sessions, using it to make pizza in a coal-fired outdoor pizza oven.

Happy New Year Sidmouth Herald readers! I hope 2022 is treating you wonderfully so far, and your New Year’s resolutions are going well. For me, this year I’ve made a resolution to bring more creativity into my days; making time for a bit of knitting, colouring and doodling and returning to my musical endeavours. And for us at the Sidmouth Youth Centre, that links to a welcome return to our beloved Skills Nights! As well as delivering our Open Access evening sessions for Juniors on Fridays (Years 6-7) and Seniors on Wednesdays (Years 8+), this year we will be running an exciting programme of Targeted Skills sessions on Tuesdays. These Skills Night youth sessions will be open to all age groups, current and new members, and will focus on developing our young people’s creative skills. We already have lots of fun activities and sessions planned including chalk art, cookery, music-making and more… We anticipate that these new sessions will be really popular, and due to limited space, young people will be encouraged to sign up each week. And so that we make sure individuals who are truly interested in each session get to attend, our young people will be told each week’s skill topic in advance. The idea behind running our Targeted Skills Night sessions, as well as engaging our young people in new skill development, is to provide our young people opportunities to engage with wider members of their local Sidmouth community… and we would love it if you would like to get involved in delivering these sessions with us! Do you have a skill, hobby, craft or interest that you could share with a group of young people? Whether you’d like to deliver a one-off talk about your interest, an interactive session (facilitated by our awesome Youth Workers) teaching a skill or perhaps you’d like to help out with regular attendance; we’re looking for all types of volunteers! Fancy getting involved? Our Youth Workers at the Centre will help to support your involvement as little or as much as feels right to you. Why not take part in this great opportunity to get to know our work and meet some of the wonderful youngsters that use Sidmouth Youth Centre and live in the Sidmouth Community; we promise you’ll have an absolute blast! So if you’d like to hear more about volunteering as part of our new Skills Nights, do pop into the Centre, or alternatively, give us a call on 01395 578852. And if you know a young person who might like to meet new friends, have fun and learn new skills, please encourage them to join Sidmouth Youth and come along to our sessions. 2022 is shaping up to be Sidmouth Youth Centre’s best year yet! We hope you’ll join us on our journey this year.

The Young Devon Sidmouth Youth Centre team were lucky enough to host two sessions of fun activities last month, as part of the annual Sidmouth Science Festival. On Tuesday 12th October, we had a special guest at our Open Access evening youth session at the Centre; Science Festival ‘Activity Host’ Alex stopped by to show our young people the physics behind the various tricks you can do on a skateboard using his Tech Deck skateboard kit.

Hi everyone, it’s been a while! I hope you’re all settling well into a new term, a new academic year and a new season. At Sidmouth Youth Centre, the new season has meant the return of an old service; we are thrilled to be running open access youth club sessions again. After the last couple of years of disruption Covid has caused to our service, I feel so grateful that we are able to offer this incredible support to our young people once more. We have had a fantastic new intake of year six youth, all of them excited for it to finally be their turn to access the youth centre on a Friday evening! We’re settling them in, establishing ground rules and relationships, and having a lot of fun; last week, we held a food quiz… as you can imagine, it got pretty messy! This new season has also meant a time of change within our staff team; one of our long-standing youth workers has moved onto another role in Young Devon. And with the sadness of seeing a much-treasured member of the team move on, also comes opportunity for new people, new relationships and new skills… Michael has joined the team as Lead Youth Worker. He is a trained teacher, an art and poetry enthusiast and has a real passion for creativity. He’s excited to be part of the team and has already started getting to know and build relationships with the groups. Another piece of great news; Kizzie, who has volunteered at the youth centre for years (following on from attending as a young person) is now employed as a sessional worker. Kizzie has started her new role with Young Devon by leading the kitchen area, taking orders in the Youth Café and leading cookery activities; last week they made apple crumble, yum. For the next few months, I am going to be spending a bit more of my time on another programme within Young Devon, so I am currently looking for someone to do some hours in the Sidmouth Youth Work Coordinator role. It’s a fantastic opportunity to make a real impact locally on the lives of young people, as well as support our wonderful team of staff… if you are passionate and experienced in supporting young people, I’d love to hear from you. You can check out the role at: https://www.youngdevon.org/work-for-us/youth-work-coordinator I hope you consider joining the Young Devon Sidmouth team! Until next time…

I must confess, summer holidays are a juggle as a working parent, and my kids end up spending a good chunk of it in holiday clubs! Luckily, they love these fun, sporty, informal spaces and mostly bound in excited for the day ahead, but on the first day this year both my children were feeling pretty anxious… This made me think of the Summer Programme we are running at Sidmouth Youth Centre this year, funded through DYS Space. We have planned lots of fun and new activities for our young people to take part in this summer, like climbing and zorbing, cooking and paddle boarding! We are thrilled that our exciting programme line-up has attracted many new young people to the centre, and are looking forward to the many ‘firsts’ and exciting experiences that our staff and young people can bond over and share together. All these first times and new experiences come with excitement, but also, for all in some way, nerves and anxiety. Within my Wellbeing Practitioner role for Young Devon, when delivering Parent-Led CBT we talk a lot about anxiety. Often, our first response to anxiety in our children is to reassure them, using phrases such as “You’ll be fine…” or “Don’t worry darling, you’ll have a great time when you get there!” But, whilst these sentences are very normal and instinctive, as a parent it can be helpful to think about alternatives. There are several alternative responses to anxiety that could be helpful to children, instead of reassurance. One response could be in the form of asking questions, for example a simple “Tell me more about that…” perhaps “What do you feel worried about?” or “How does that make you feel in your body?” Another useful response could be making an extra effort to notice and give loud and clear praise of brave behaviour, like “Wow! You were worried about going to that camp, but you were really brave and gave it a go! Well done…” or using encouraging phrases like “How about just give it a go and see?” Where reassurance can drive reliance on outside input to feel secure and confident to face a potential stressful situation, adding in some of these alternative responses can help the child find that security and confidence from within themselves; building up their own sense of being able to build resilience. I hope these CBT techniques reduce your children's 'summer scaries', and help them to let loose and have fun this month.

Over the last year, our Senior Youth Worker, Chris Moore, has been working on renovating the youth centre’s DJ booth; a fun space for young people to explore music. Our DJ booth is a popular slot for young people to sign up to, providing a soundtrack for our open access nights. This creative space was starting to look shabby, and we found the set-up was not overly usable for the young people. It needed a good lot of painting, sanding and a proper re-organisation, so that we could make better use of it. Cue Chris, and his renovating skills! But after redecoration, we hit a problem. With the DJ booth looking slick and smart and ready for action, we investigated the old equipment and it was looking just that, old, and not fit for purpose. Chris remembered Councillor Stuart Hughes, and his ‘locality budget’; each of our County Councillors has an annual fund of £10,000 that they can use to respond to local needs. Councillors can, if they wish, make grants to support projects or activities that benefit the communities they represent. I spoke to Councillor Hughes about the work we’d done over the last year on the DJ booth, what we hoped to use the space for, and the problem we’d hit upon with the equipment. As a member of Sidmouth Town Council’s Youth Panel, and a passionate community supporter, he was keen to help the youth centre; after our discussion and a brief application form, he agreed to provide a grant for new speakers and amps. We are thrilled! Chris said: “It’s brilliant news, the equipment will be really useful and the young people will be stoked! “The DJ booth makeover has meant that we've been able to update old paint work while bringing brighter colour to the youth centre. The funding provided by Councillor Stuart Hughes means we have been able to update our old music equipment and bring it more up to date with higher quality sound enabling us to widen opportunities for young people to learn new skills in music and sound.” Another of our lead youth workers, Hannah Vicarage, said: “Fabulous news! That's really great it has been agreed; what a win for the youth centre.” A big thanks to Councillor Hughes! We look forward to showing off our new DJ booth with young people and the community of Sidmouth!

Young people have wonderful ideas and their creativity is inspiring! We are pleased to be starting an exciting new project with Sidmouth Town Council this month, and we believe co-designing and co-producing this project with the young people that will use it is essential to making it a success… Last week, we met with a group of young people from Sidmouth Youth Centre, including a range of representatives from across all the age groups we work with. We discussed the project with them, asked how they would like to get involved in the work, explained the different types of tools they could use for involving and gathering ideas from young people across Sidmouth, and together we started creating a list of top priorities. The Sidmouth Youth team were delighted to see young people of all ages working together so well; encouraging ideas and challenging each other positively. We are passionate about young people’s participation at Young Devon, as we believe young people are best placed to know about the challenges they face, the impact that these challenges have on their lives and the best solutions for them. We place young people at the centre of our services and work in partnership with them, ensuring their voice sits at the centre of all service planning, evaluation and delivery. Participation has also been a big part of my career before moving to the Westcountry. Did you know that one of the United Nations fundamental child rights is that children and young people have the right to be heard and to express their voice in a way that works for them? In my previous roles, I have spent time talking to young people about this; often young people feel they have had choices and power taken away from them, especially those that live in poverty or are in the justice system. I cherish opportunities to tell children and young people they have this right, and that they can ignite change in things that impact them and matter to them. The group of young people we met with last week were equally inspired by this new information about their rights, and jumped at the chance to list down all their hopes and dreams for the project. I sat back, asked the odd explorative questions, encouraged, praised and gave them the space to develop their own ideas. I am hoping that this group will become equal contributors and leaders on this piece of work, as they now have the opportunity to see their voice influence and shape an important and valuable piece of work in their community.