Our 2020-2021 Annual Report
We began the year with gratitude for all the support we had received from our funders, board and volunteers....
2021 Update
Despite Covid-19, lockdowns and social restrictions, we continue to deliver preventative, and crisis support for local and vulnerable families through mentoring, counselling services, training and family support.
This year more than ever we are seeing a need for counselling in the round, and we are pleased to have appointed an excellent, full-time counsellor to enable us to support more people in need. We have also recruited a therapeutic play practitioner as many of our new referrals are younger families with young children.
We continue to deliver accredited and non-accredited training to families – online and in person when restrictions allow.
We also deliver support for pre-school children and their families through our flying start nursery settings and wraparound service. We also offer a specialist mobile crèche.
We are also really pleased to have been awarded a second year of social prescribing work by Llanelli GPs. This offer includes counselling and tailored support to children, young people and their families, through GP referral from.
A quick overview of our active projects in 2021:
Children in Need project
working with Primary Children
Year 6
Bryn Teg school - Digi Clwb
Our online digital safety project has come at the right time for the Year 6 children in Bryn Teg School. It has been refreshing for the children to discuss openly and honestly through creative play about their concerns and understanding around staying safe online.
We created and delivered a Digi Clwb Power Point to the Whole School Assembly, this was important as it enables the messages coming from from Year 6 to be heard by all year groups; connecting children’s shared interest, which is paramount in empowering children and young to make wise and safe decisions with their online activities.
The project received excellent feedback and the school hopes to deliver it to more year groups.
Bryn Teg school - Digi Clwb
Bryn Teg school - Digi Clwb
Bryn Teg school - Digi Clwb
CYCA ROOTS’s Project
(National Lottery Community Fund)
The ROOTS team continue to work directly with families within our community building resilience and providing opportunities to succeed.
Julie and Rachel have run a number of face-to-face workshops on an Introduction to ‘Heal Yourself from Adrenal Fatigue’ Course
The umbrella’s that surround the effect on Adrenal Fatigue are:
- Nutrition - the effects and benefits of having a healthy diet on the body
- Emotional - how do you handle stress? What type of a person are you?
- Understanding the information around Adrenal Fatigue (AF) - physical implications on your body and the effect it has on AF.
- Social - personal self-care routine, to give yourself tips to look after your wellbeing.
This is our fourth group of learners and the feedback has been very positive in terms of gaining knowledge and understanding of AF. Learning and being aware of how they are functioning through stress and in daily life has been very beneficial and many are now making small changes in their life e.g skin care routine, trying out CYCA healthy eating recipes (given by learners), and continuing with simple stretch routines.
Heal Yourself from Adrenal Fatigue
Heal Yourself from Adrenal Fatigue
As lasting legacy of ROOTS, the team are in the process of supporting and training our wonderful mentor Mams.
Our mentor Mams are completing training in Peer Mentoring, Safeguarding, Manual Handling Food Hygiene, Equal Opportunities and First Aid. Alongside our CEO the mentor Mams have been building new skills in Ceramics for future workshops (image below).
Carrie has developed a cupcake baking and decorating workshop for our families and is in the process of planning her second workshop.
In addition to this, the team have been busy with a range of accredited and non-accredited training courses in:
- Healthy Lifestyles
- Resilience
- Children and Young Peoples Development
- Safeguarding
Fitness Fridays have evolved, and we have started our wellbeingwalking@thedocks group, with both Parents and children
Thomas Walls Trust project:
Digital resilience and an Introduction to Microsoft packages.
This non accredited course develops skills for digital resilience by using and introducing: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher. The project builds confidence and encourages participants to use digital devices, packages and platforms.
We support participants to create a PowerPoint for an interview setting and walk through how they can then deliver their work, this is shared with others on the course and has made an enormous impact on the confidence of the participants.
During the course we encourage friendly discussions and sharing experiences they have had with Word, PowerPoint, and other packages and we work towards creating digital awareness and confidence. Many have gained more knowledge than they expected to have from the course. Feedback has been positive, and resilience wellbeing has increased e.g Learner 1 start wellbeing score 39-End score 43.
This project is ending in August 2021. It has enabled us to upskill many individuals and bring new digital skills and opportunities to many people. Thank you so much!
Professional Resilience Training
COVID has presented CYCA with many opportunities to grow and develop our business model. One of our overarching long-term goal of delivering professional training pan-Wales has come to fruition. We have trained professionals from the four corners of Wales, most recently in Machynlleth.
Our Professional Resilience Training is differentiated and designed to take account of the structure and roles within each organisation. We train from top down, Senior Managers and the Leadership teams undertake Accredited Resilience, and front-line staff undertake the non-accredited version. The reason why we approach training in this way is that the whole organisation has a new resilient language, managers can support and supervise colleagues in a resilient way. Peer-to-peer support is effective to support others.
For more information please click here.
We are also running a Coop Foundation Bereavement Project, offering counselling support to young people between the ages of 13-20. This is delivered by supporting and enabling peer mentoring.
For information on this or any of our projects, please contact Lianna: lianna@cycaonline.org