Waterloo | CYCA - Connecting Youth, Children & Adults

An exciting new project that has been funded by the Waterloo Foundation this project will give CYCA the opportunity to work with eighteen primary schools over a period of three years in the Llanelli area.

The work is underpinned by our trauma and resilience model and we work systemically with the whole family.

The aim of the project is to support primary schools to support families at crisis point. The collaboration between CYCA and the primary schools, is to offer key staff within the schools to receive CYCA’s systemic family support training.

This will give key staff the skills to support families that are identified or approach the school for help and support. CYCA acts as a scaffolding mechanism of support to the key staff working with the families.

The support that we offer the families is therapeutic support through our counselling services, play therapy, sand therapy and mentoring.

All schools receive an opportunity for parents and carers to attend CYCA’s accredited resilience course, this will give the families the tools and skills to face crisis’s in the future.

The pupils of the schools will receive CYCA’s superhero resilience training, so that the whole family have the key messages and use of language to help themselves now and in the future.

CYCA are currently working with five primary schools in Llanelli which are Stebonheath, Bigyn, Ysgol Penrhos, Ysgol Y Ffwrness and Bynea.

Schools will contribute a small fee for the collaboration, you can expect the following support from CYCA:

Four training sessions for the head and designated school staff
Training on CYCA’s assessment framework
Termly supervisions
Access to Tracy Pike MBE CEO and Lianna Davies Senior Manager for advice and guidance
Resilience training for parents which will take place in the school
Pupils will have superhero resilience training and this can be delivered in a variety of ways

Each family supported will have access to an array of support which includes:

Counselling for child and parent
Male and female mentors
Family support officer
1-1 Resilience support
Play therapy

Year One Report

The Waterloo school project continues to be successful we are supporting more families across the five schools Ysgol Gymraeg Ffwrnes, Bynea primary school, Stebonheath primary school, Penrhos primary school and Bigyn primary school. On the 12th of March we held our quarterly school supervision with our school link officers. The supervision is essential and forms part of the partnership.

The link officers are able to give us insight into the impact our partnership is having on the families we are supporting, for example, improved attendance at school, children are reported as being happier in school. As part of the supervision we offer training, the training this quarter we explored the emotions we face on a daily basis, how we are all ‘quirky’ and we as a group we identified what we liked and didn’t like. For example, sitting in a certain chair, how we don’t like certain clothes and materials, how we may struggle to concentrate on conversations, thinking about our upstairs and downstairs brain (rational and amygdala).

It offers the school link officers tools and strategies to be able to help and support them to support families.

As we approach the end of the first year, we have compiled end of year reports for the schools and this included some quantitative data around the HACT model, this depicts how much we are saving society as a result of the partnership.

We are looking forward to heading into year 2.

"CYCA has once again delivered immediate, quality support to some of our more complex and troubled families. They work in a proactive, supportive and professional manner that makes the families engaging with them feel safe and willing to accept the help being offered.

CYCA for school staff also deliver a helping hand and advice when relationships are often on the verge of breaking down, giving timely and objective advice that sometimes is needed to get things back on track.

CYCA fill a gap that we would not be able to effort to not fill economically or emotionally."

"The service provided has been exceptional. We have referred many families to CYCA through the schoolwork project and many families have benefited massively. It has supported us as a school, the pupils and the parents greatly. It has helped us understand some deeper issues that the family are maybe facing or have in the past, so that we are able to support them moving forward."

“Both myself and the school’s two Link Staff (ELSAs) received appropriate training at the beginning of the project to be able to engage with the families with confidence. CYCA have supported my two ELSAs throughout the year and are always available for support and advice when needed. There has been a supervision session each term with CYCA and this has proved to be valuable to share progress, information and experiences. CYCA ran a six-week Resilience Course for Parents during the year. This was very popular and well attended.

CYCA Officers also supported individual children from families engaged in the project. CYCA organised a Cookery Course for the parents. Additionally, family members were engaged in Counselling sessions at the CYCA Offices.

The service we have received this year has been excellent. It has been wide-ranging, engaging and very beneficial to the school, to the families and to the children.”

"The service has been well received by the key staff involved. The potential of the service in Year 2 of this collaboration between the school and you as a strategic partner is welcomed. The service to date has been purposeful."