Clilstore Facebook WA Linkedin Email
Login

This is a Clilstore unit. You can link all words to dictionaries.

Interview: Health worker Isabel Steele

I’m Isabel Steele. I live in Benbecula and I work for the health promotion department of the Western Isles Health Board, and, eh, my job could be writing policies and strategies that affect young – children and young people, and providing training on issues such as child protection, em, children’s rights, eh, bullying, other mental health issues – well, general health and wellbeing issues.

About five years ago we were doing a piece of work for the schools on bullying and, eh, with a company from Edinburgh – em, we used them as professionals, eh, on the issue of bullying. And as part of that work, eh, we got the chance of being one of the first children’s parliaments in Scotland. The TASC training agency, which is Cathy and Colin, were also setting up the children’s parliament group, and they had seen the work we were doing here with young people and they thought it would be a really good opportunity for us, and for them, to have a children’s parliament group in Uist and Barra.

Initially, the children’s parliament, em, I got involved with because – and felt we should go for it because – it was building on children’s confidence, building children’s self-esteem, which is, sort of, always at the heart of health promotion work that we do. And also at the same time we were, as a health service, we were being asked to consult with young people about how they found services. So, although we didn’t have a firm idea exactly how we were going to develop and deliver the programme it was very much about, well, will we make young people more confident in being able to, em, consult with them later on, so that they can tell us what they think about our services – was always at the back of my mind, and how we were going to do that we weren’t really quite sure. Em, but we were going to work with children of all abilities, eh, because I felt, and as Cathy and Colin did as well, that all children have a lot to give, but quite often when it goes to consulting with them it’s the most academic and the best behaved children and everything that get the opportunity to have their say. And we wanted a mix, we wanted a di-, a more, a more diverse group if possible to sort of work with them and see if we could make a difference in their lives and their confidence levels, their self-esteem, and the end result, for me as a health worker, was that we’d be able to consult with them.

The children’s parliament work is based very much on the theme from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and a lot of the work we were doing was based on children’s rights and increasing children’s, em, knowledge about their rights, but also increasing, eh, adults’ knowledge about children’s rights so that you had a two-way thing. So a lot of the programme was based upon – the new programme was based upon, eh, these themes to try and get the children realising what their rights were, and how they could use these rights, and also we did some work with adults to make them realise that children had rights and that you could actually get some really good work out of children by letting them have their rights.

When we went to Heisgeir, em, the children were actually working on the John Muir Award. So it was part of something that they had been working on for three or four months, and it let the kids stick at something. We supported those children, maybe, who had more chaotic lifestyles to actually keep at something, which is quite difficult for some of them to do sometimes, because if they’re not getting any support in areas where children would normally get it, em, to carry on with something or encouragement from somewhere to carry on with something they can quite easily give up. So we supported them over about three or four months to maintain the interest. Eh, so they were working towards achieving something, and that sense of achievement is great for children’s self-esteem and confidence. So they had to plan the event, em, going on the boat for the first time, camping for the first time, some of them.

And, em, they had to organise the food, you know, everything they would need to survive on a desert island, basically, as well as looking at what had happened in their communities before them. So people like – they actually went to see where people had lived and gone to school in, and, em, they met Angus, who – Angus Moy – who’d lived there, which they were really fascinated by. So they were learning about their history and their culture as well. So they had more of a sense of belonging to where they’re from and things, so there’s a whole load of experiences that – eh, teamwork, everything like that was kind of in there that they were doing when they went to Heisgeir.

It certainly met our aims, em, and the children have, I feel, have achieved so much and they’ve had so many new experiences. And I don’t believe that they’ve worked through creative art and play so much, eh, you know, in any other project they might be involved in. And it was only one day a month, eh, for ten months of the year – there was Christmas and the summer holiday that we didn’t meet – but just to see that that – the input they got for one day a month was actually chan- you know they were changing them, I feel. Em, yes they’re changing anyway as children, but I felt that they were changing them in their confidence, in their interests, and they came back, time and time again.

Overall, I think the children’s confidence levels and communications with adults, positive communications with adults, em, and positive experience with adults has – you know they’ve really benefited from that. They’ve engaged with adults I believe they wouldn’t have engaged with otherwise if they hadn’t been involved in the children’s parliament.

Em, they’ve had loads of opportunities – from, you know, going to camp in Heisgeir or – which is very expensive actually, you know, it was the most expensive thing we did by the time we hired the boats and everything – em, or going to interview Kathleen Marshall’s – Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People – interviewing her staff, eh, before they were put into their jobs, you know, so they’ve done a whole level of stuff. And I just think they’ve benefited so much from it, and I can see them putting that back into their communities and, hopefully, get a real sense of community belonging, eh, themselves.

I feel that we’re leaving it far too late before we ask them their views on anything. Em, and by that point they’re inhibited by adolescence and you get less from them whereas I’ve certainly seen them developing that the earlier you start it and continue that, em, consultation process right through they have faith in it. Em whereas the experience I’d had previously was that we were consulting with fourteen, fifteen year-olds, and they didn’t feel that what they were saying was actually going to make any difference, whereas the consulting that we’ve done with the children’s parliament, I feel the children believe, um, that their views are actually taken into consideration – the way that it’s done they actually feel that, well my knowledge has gone somewhere, my view on something has gone somewhere and I’m going to be a part of the big picture, whereas I didn’t get that feeling when we did consulting with fifteen and sixteen year-olds in the past.

Clilstore Island VoicesCP in BenbeculaCatriona Black

Short url:   https://clilstore.eu/cs/641