Listen Up - Social Welfare Portal

listenup!74 | Chapter 10about how to cope with certain situations.Supporting their peers in these groups also helpedthem to develop skills:“As we’re learning to help other people deal withcertain situations, we’re also learning from each other.”Young personEducation and career developmentYoung people at three of the services spokespecifically about having been encouraged tocontinue going to college.“I don’t think I’d be the person I am now [if I hadn’tused the service]… I’d be on the streets… I wouldn’tbe studying.”Young personWorkers helped young people to manage thechallenges in their lives and helped prevent thesefrom interfering with their college commitments.Another young person reported that staff from theservice had liaised with their teachers in problematictimes to ensure the teachers had a soundunderstanding of the young person’s needs.“I did a vocational 12-week course and managedto go to every one [class], which I have never beenable to do [before]… I am also doing an ongoing ITcourse and looking into voluntary work.”Young personSome young people said they had managed to enterpaid employment, and keep their jobs successfully,with the support of service staff. Others becamemore focused and clear about their future careerdevelopment goals. One young person said theyhad been inspired by workers and peers to pursue acareer in young people’s mental health:“It’s inspired me… I’ve learnt what I want to do as aliving… I look at the workers here, and think, yeah, Iwant to do this.”Young personAnother young person said the support andinformation she had gained from the staff at theservice helped her become a special needs assistant,and supported her so she could keep her job:“I wouldn’t be able to do the job that I do [if I didn’tuse the service]… I work in a school helping pupilswith behavioural problems… if it wasn’t for theinformation I get here I wouldn’t have a service I canrecommend to the children and school… Also, Icouldn’t handle their [the children’s] problems as wellas I do now.”Young personHousingSome services provided specialist help with housing,and this was very important for many young people.“So when you’ve been in a crap home to start off, andthen you get put in foster care, then hostels wherethere’s drug users for your next-door neighbours…[then] you get a home for the first time, and youvalue that.”Young personOne young person spoke of how the service hadacted as an intermediary in securing housing. Socialservices had refused to recognise that the youngperson was homeless, even though they had beenunable to live at home because of their mother’sbehaviour. Staff at the service then contacted theHomeless Persons’ Unit, which immediately agreed toplace the young person in a hostel.“She [the service worker] phoned up people sheknows and asked for their advice about housingme… She phoned social services and they said theydidn’t see why I was homeless, then spoke to mykeyworker at the Homeless Persons’ Unit… I wasn’treally involved – she did all the talking for me and Igot housed.”Young person