PREVENTING HOMELESSNESS PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES

HES Schools Service

Move On strives to develop innovative ways to reach young people, including those in care, who we have been unable to contact through existing means. After a highly successful two years Move On has secured a further two years funding from the City of Edinburgh Council’s Homelessness Strategy, keeping us working in the 24 mainstream schools until at least 2008.
The project has built up a strong working relationship with the majority of the mainstream schools in Edinburgh, and now we are seeing an increase in demand for our services, including tailor made programmes for specific groups of young people within the schools.

School Take Up in 2005 – 2006

No. of individual young people reached	1816
Individual contacts with young people	3632
Workshops delivered	216
Schools delivered to	21
No. of volunteers delivering for Move On	12

Initially the programme was set to target 4th year pupils, but soon expanded to 5th and 6th years at the request of the teaching staff. The schools decided which year group to target, but generally once we had delivered to one year group the schools then requested the sessions for the following year groups. Group sizes ranged from 8-48 young people.

Over 75% of young people filled in evaluations. The majority of the young people stated that they had learnt something new at the sessions ranging from practical advice like phone numbers to changing attitudes. All thought the workshops were fun and stated that the volunteers made a real difference. They also commented that it was good to learn in different ways and it was good to get a variety at school. They wanted more information on a variety of different topics including: money, benefits, jobs and opportunities open to them.

70% all wanted more workshops
71% had learnt something new from the sessions.

Some comments from young people:

"It was interesting, informative and fun – all at the same time – cheers!"

"It was more exciting than classes and I learnt there is a lot of help out there."

"I learnt loads... what to do when I leave and about the responsibilities."

Teaching Staff Evaluations

17 school evaluations completed evaluations and overall marks out of 10 were:

11 schools marked the workshops	10
4 schools marked the workshops	9
2 marked the workshops	8

The volunteers were highly professional about the volume and amount of workshops and were not fazed when they had to deliver to 45 young people at one school. The peer education is true and pure due to the fact that the volunteers are also highly skilled at working with staff from other organisations and they are the ones that lead the workshops so the above evaluations are a true testament to them all.

Quotes from staff and teachers

“Thanks for all your hard work it was super.”

“Great knowledge and understanding and practical experience, it was really good having ex-homeless people involved.”

“It is good that students see this as joint working and makes follow up work easier. “