Ages: 14-15 years. Year 10 students. Location: George Stephenson School and Rowan Court Independent Living Accommodation Situation: Mrs Smith contacted me for information on Junior Campaigners and Healing hearts and Minds programmes. She has heard about the programmes from other professionals and invited Holly and myself into into the school to discuss both programmes. Task: 4 weeks Junior campaigners social action programme, delivered in the school. After the programme was delivered the young people came up with their own social action programme that would benefit others living in the local community. Action: Young people came up the idea of offer a games morning for the local older residents living in an Independent living accommodation 5 minutes’ walk along from the young people school. The young people made lists of what was needed for the game’s morning, we supported them with a risk assessment and the information needed to contact the accommodation to make contact. Results: 23 young people delivered a fun morning of games and bingo with hot beverages and snacks. The young people have made a great impression on the staff and the residents, the residents had a brilliant morning and has asked for the young people to do the session again. “This is amazing, we never get anyone to come into the recreational area(!!), to have young people in the room is lovely. The food is lovely and fresh, and the games have been great!”

Whilst in North Ormesby Youth Club, 8 young people engaged throughout the 7 weeks of this junior campaigner’s project. The first few weeks of the project, I was introducing myself and the project with the young people and finding out what they were passionate about helping to change in their local area. The young people were torn between helping people with mental health issues and creating wellbeing packs for them but not knowing where to give them to, and they were wanting to help people who are homeless, creating packs for them and donating them to a homeless shelter in Middlesbrough town. The young people then decided their passion was to help the homeless and we thought about what we would like do to do tackle this. Over the next week we designed a poster which would be put around Middlesbrough and North Ormesby and got this to the standard we would like it, on this week also we created a list of the things we would like to put in the packs for the homeless. The young people decided they wanted, hand warmers, gloves, socks, blankets, toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, wipes and a refillable water bottle, lots of tinned food and sanitary items. The week after this we put all of the packs together and worked as a team to get 20 packs completed and made up ready for them to be delivered. Staff members went to Doorways in Middlesbrough town centre which is a homeless shelter, and delivered these packs and gave them some posters so that they could also advertise themselves.

We recruited 5 young people from the Redcar area who were interested in becoming young inspectors. All 5 of the young people met up with some Middlesbrough young people and…