Leaps & Bounds helping kids shine on stage
Oct 15 2008 Agenda
Leaps & Bounds has an innovative way of working with young people through a combination of personal life coaching and the performing arts. Co-ordinator Steve Teagle explains how it works.
“I now have self confidence and don’t care what people think about me or my stammer, I can stand in front of a crowd and tell them my feelings”. Natalie, 18 years old.
“Before I became involved with Leaps and Bounds, I had been in 29 foster homes in four years. Now, I’ve been with the same family for a year and a half, am half way through a plastering diploma at college and I feel as if my life is really settled.” CJ, aged 17.
These are just two samples from some of the 200 young people from Sandwell, Walsall, Dudley and Telford and Wrekin involved in the Leaps & Bounds ‘Chasing Fate’ project, 70 of whom are preparing to take the stage at the Birmingham Hippodrome on Friday.
The ambitious new musical inspired by the real life experiences of the young people features a small professional cast led by Laurence Olivier Award winning actor David Bedella (Jerry Springer The Opera). The creative team includes artistic director Christopher Key (Avenue Q, Les Miserables), writer James Hall (EastEnders, The Bill) and composer Douglas Whyte (Les Misérables, Pop Idol).
I became involved in April 2007 when I was appointed Sandwell Co-ordinator through Sandwell Council’s youth offending team.
I had 15 years’ experience working with young people and families in children’s homes, care leaving projects, and within field social work and child protection teams so working with young people with issues is familiar territory. But I had never had any experience of working in the arts and had never seen the Channel 4 documentary series about Ballet Hoo! until I attended an inspiring presentation by Michelle Bould, project manager of Chasing Fate.
Seeing the amazing life transformations experienced by young people over 18 months as they underwent intensive personal development training lead by the charity ‘Youth at Risk’ and performance coaching with Birmingham Royal Ballet was fascinating and unlike anything I had ever come across. It made me feel curious and excited.
Throughout my social work career I have worked in densely populated, diverse Midlands inner city communities and in London. Criminality, fear and perception of crime, deprivation unemployment, poor educational attainment, estrangement and breakdown in relationships are all the key indicators, which exist in the most at risk young people.
My first field social work experience was in Seven Sisters North London, within a 16+ leaving care team. The post came about as a result of the tragic death of Victoria Kilimbie with funds available across departments in the local authority, to improve the engagement with the most at risk client groups.
Years later I worked in Southwark with young people involved in the death of Damilola Taylor. As a result of this incident the North Peckham Estate had millions pumped into a regeneration programme to improve housing. The estate was demolished and new housing built. However little or no intervention took place with the most at risk families and I know some of the same gangs are still terrorising communities.
So often my role has meant I am involved with children, young people and their families in a reactionary way. My role has been to safeguard and contain situations, and ensure needs are being met. This involvement is often met with hostility, and barriers have to be overcome.
The same can be said for my role in youth offending. I become involved with the young person when something has happened. Again, building the relationships can be difficult as the young person often does not want intervention but has to engage to fulfil their commitment to their sentence.
What is unique about Leaps & Bounds is it allows the same people to work with us in a voluntary relationship on an agenda they determine in the form of life goals. It doesn’t start with the negative agenda of, for example, school refusal or offending behaviour. Through a powerful enrolment process, the young people give us their ‘permission’ to work with them. As a result they want to be with us. They want the support and what they commit to is their ‘Word’. We listen to their issues and they find solutions through their engagement with the support of powerful coaching. We hold them to what they say they want.
And then there’s the incredible confidence they gain through their involvement in a professional theatre production – seeing them gain skills, discovering and fulfilling potential and the amazing results – I have seen these people change in the most extraordinary way and, like Ballet Hoo! I know the result of this 18 months will be an electrifying performance.
Comparing my past experiences to those gained through working on the Leaps & Bounds Project, I can see an opportunity was missed to improve and give hope to those families by engaging directly and personally with their issues. Re-housing may have improved living environments – an important aspiration, but vitally it left out the human ‘renovation’ required. The same families are facing the same problems in newer accommodation. The same young people face the same issues such as criminalisation at an early age. Without a holistic approach and early intervention, their life chances remain limited.
I’m not saying Leaps and Bounds creates a Utopia. The young people (and sometimes staff and life coaches) make mistakes. However, mistakes are used for learning and form an important part of coaching. A community is built amongst the young people based on trust.
When the project started last year 75 per cent of the company were not in education, employment or training. We now have 90 per cent in full time education, employment or training.
Young people who were homeless have rekindled relationships and returned to the family fold, saving a significant amount for the local economy.
Young people on the periphery of offending or actively involved have kept out of trouble since the start of the project. It costs £50,000 per year to keep a young person incarcerated. Leaps & Bounds’ WROSNE project targeting a particular neighbourhood in Dudley this year as part of a community initiative saw crime rates reduce 50 per cent.
Surely the benefits of this project outweigh the costs. The legacy will be future generations will have aspirations and will be committed to achieving all they set out to. The graduates of the projects are already joining Youth Parliaments, forums and are peer mentoring others. I believe this project will prevent many from ‘draining the system’ through claiming benefits, becoming young parents or entering local authority care. It will reduce the risk of offending and the costs, financial and emotional, associated with being the victim and the perpetrator of crime.
In my experience, high profile deaths of children and young people led to disproportionate funds being available, with the spending ultimately papering over the cracks, not addressing the deep seated issues that lie within those communities deemed most “at risk”. We know the communities that need support; we know the families and communities that need intervention to raise expectations. The young people are the future, and I believe more effort needs to be given to intervene to break the cycle earlier with the voluntary and effective approaches Leaps & Bounds offers.
These young people have inspired me. Through all their adversity, difficulties and troubles they have grown and matured in front of me. They have allowed me to walk hand in hand with them on this journey. They have given me their permission to support them. I am indebted to them for enabling me to grow both professionally and personally throughout this experience and the affection I have for them all, I know, will remain with me always and for this, I cannot thank them enough.
n Chasing Fate is at Birmingham Hippodrome, Friday 17 and Saturday 18 October. For tickets call 0844 338 5000 or book online www.birminghamhippodrome.com
