Peer Youth Workers' blog

Oldham Detached Conference

Mon Feb 26, 2007 10:07

Fortunately the breafast was good, so soon everyone was ready to go to their workshops.

On Saturday 24th February the 4 senior peer youth workers (Gina, Claire, Martin and John) along with Rebecca, attended a conference for detached youth workers, in the Oldham centre for professional development. None of the peer youth workers frequented town of Oldham so it was a great achievement for everybody to get there on time J. The start time of the conference was 9.30 however nothing really happened until 10. Between 9.30 and 10 everybody indulged in a greatly appreciated breakfast buffet, complete with Danish pastries, muffins and scones. Also Claire learned how to use a coffee machine, well done Claire! After the half an hour period for refreshments, there was a short welcome speech delivered by Catherine Lingard, who is the assistant head of youth service. She made a glorified introduction of Geoff Brand who delivered a low key, seemingly unenthusiastic yet extremely inspiring keynote speech. He took a humorous approach to describing his views on education, how he feels it should be different and how this relates to detached youth work. After the keynote speech the workshops began. Martin and John did the young men’s well being workshop first, Gina and Claire did assessing risk on the street whilst Rebecca did the eating disorders workshop. Martin and John found their workshop very interesting with some very interesting activities which put things in perspective, however it was a lot like sociology and didn’t relate a great deal to the work we did. <Insert opinion on your workshop here. > After the first workshop was lunch, where everybody discussed how the morning went. The lunch was fabulously catered and everybody was impressed with the food. After food there was an opportunity to see the “buzz”. This is a bus complete with computers, games consoles and very comfortable sofas! Everybody was buzzing of the buzz and we had the idea to get one for the cathedra; gardens project! In the afternoon martin and John did assessing risk on the street, Gina and Claire did eating disorders and Rebecca did <sorry cant remember>. Martin and John found their workshop very useful and will certainly be applying what they learnt to writing their own risk assessments. <Insert opinion here>. After the afternoon workshops there was a closing speech and all the people running the workshops shared their feedback. All in all, a very good day!


Early on Saturday morning John, Gina, Martin and Claire found themselves standing in the drizzle outside a conference venue in Oldham.


End of the day - we'd all learned lots

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