Throughout lockdown, LBC’s Next Gen network has been busy facilitating numerous training sessions for Black Country kids and youth workers through partnerships with specialist organisations.
As concerns continue to rise about the impact of months of isolation on the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people, a Mental Health Training Session, hosted by LBC Next Gen and kindly delivered free of charge by Phase Trust, took place virtually over two sessions during May.
40 children’s and youth workers took part in the training which intended to prepare and equip leaders ready for the potential increase in mental health issues as a result of lockdown. Offering a mixture of theory and practical help, those who took part were given a number of resources to help kids and teenagers discuss their worries, alongside signposts to qualified experts who can help further if needed.
A few weeks later in June, we were also able to partner with Reality Trust to provide Anger Management Training, licensing youth workers to deliver anger management sessions in schools after lockdown.
Reality Trust also kindly partnered with us again in early July to deliver free Bereavement Training for kids and youth workers. This training provided a general background to loss and advice about how we can support children and young people going through these situations of loss. As we are aware that “loss” will take on many forms during this pandemic, we looked at relationships/divorce etc as well as death.
We’d like to say a huge thank you to both Phase Trust and Reality Trust for being so generous with their time and skills and serving so many kids and youth workers in our area so selflessly. We’re encouraged to know that hundreds of children and young people in our area will now be supported by well-equipped, knowledgeable and caring kids and youth workers as a result of the training they’ve gone through.
If you’d like to know more about the training partnerships we have lined up in the future, please contact deb@loveblackcountry.org.uk.