Purposeful Activities Steering Group

The ‘Purposeful Activities Steering Group’ in Nottingham meets regularly to develop & initiate leisure & sporting opportunities for Young Asylum Seeking & Refugee children in the city. It was initially convened in October 2004 in order to provide focus, offer advice, target resources & develop structures for appropriate use of the Purposeful Activities Grant from the Home Office.

Building upon the good practice & the successes that two City Secondary schools (Manning School & Elliot Durham School) had had previously and as an opportunity to work collaboratively, share expertise, and to initiate new activity within a wider context. The Steering group consists of representatives from the Sports Development team, representatives from the Asylum Seeker Support Team in the Education Department, members of staff from the two identified Secondary schools and a representative from Voice East Midlands.

Priority has been placed upon furthering existing activities & planning new initiatives. The steering group's commitment is to ensure that there is a range of appropriate & desired opportunities, explored through consultation with young people from both schools.

This premise was established early - the first round of consultation informed how the HO grant was spent. At Elliot Durham School, a mixed gender focus group, provided insight into the potential interests of the pupils & the issues that surrounding participation in activity for them. At Manning School for Girls the consultation was with both pupils & their parents, discussing their feelings in regard to their daughters' engagement with extra curricular activity, what was considered to be appropriate and would be encouraged.  It came as pleasant surprise that Parents were happy to give permission for their daughters to pursue swimming once they were confident that any anxieties or concerns were addressed.

One of the underlining strengths of the steering group is the level of cooperative working across departments, schools & between individuals. The Steering group meetings are an opportunity to feedback on the successes, and monitor of the impacts of the activities, to explore specific issues that effect young people’s lives & the resulting impacts for them in terms of how they are able to integrate, set and achieve their own goals, & contribute to school & the(ir) wider community.

The Steering group is committed to this work and recognises that having created its own momentum, there is much more to be achieved. For example, to develop future work both with and in other schools, that attention should be paid to other age groups & the raising of self-esteem & confidence in boys. The Steering group’s aim is to pursue further funding steams to facilitate future purposeful activity for young people. There have been wider benefits of working as a group. The coming together and sharing of ideas by professionals with different experiences & approaches is a valuable resource. A great deal of learning from each other took place as a result.

Schools will remain central to this work as long as children are the target group, as a steering group we have become increasingly aware that schools have an essential role to play: they are a focus for the community as school is a shared experience by all families and will enjoy a higher profile in the community as the Every Child Matters agenda develops around initiatives such as extended schools & Children’s Centres.

This new vision of education is to embrace the whole life experience of children and requires the integration of all services concerned with their development, welfare, health & safety. The Steering Group aims to reflect this and hence a wider range of agencies needs to be represented. For example, other partners within Integrated Children’s Services and representatives from the voluntary sector.

Project website: www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/sitemap/lcsd_activities_for_asylum_seekers