BlindFish Ideas

For the Youth Work Summit I decided to attempt some collection and storage of tweets with the #hashtag #yws13. Twitter has a great tool for staying up to date with the tweets as the come in but I wanted to also have a nice document back up which I created with www.ifttt.com . I hope its useful to people at the event and away form the event. Read more below.   Document collecting ALL #yws13 tweets here   Tweets about "#yws13" This automatic backing up of tweets is possible due to a handle little service called If This Then That found at www.ifttt.com. You sign up for an account and then create recipes for all kind of cool automations. Cross platform posting, getting emails warning you of weather warnings. The digital world is you oyster. Especially using the immensely powerful RSS feed trigger.  RSS feeds are amazing ways to share, organise and collect information. Most search engines have an RSS feed built in so that you can get automatic...

Over the last 2 weeks, for the first time I have taught a full Sex and Relationship Education trainer course. In the past I have helped out on someone elses course and have lead workshops on specific topics at events/conferences. This was the first time I took  responsibility for an entire course. The course I taught is the 4 day  Esteem Resource Network  course. This was the course I was originally trained in and 5 years and 500+ hours of classroom experience later I was now teaching the course. The course had 10 people and I loved opening up the wide field of Relationship and Sex Education to them.  On the course I had 1 co worker, 1 local church based child and family worker, 2 third year youth work students (one who has been on placement with me) and a herd of 6 second year youth work students. So basically everyone was a youth worker or similar  This helped me as it's the group of people I work with the most. I know ...

I think this is a great talk about charity. I work for two charities and live in the frustration of small scale and the desire to keep the overheads low. Now waste in overhead is always a bad thing but I cringe when I hear people being classed as overheads. Yes trim the budget on the travel by making sure people take the most reasonable train option but don't fire your face to face workers. Just because their face to face work involves talking to donors not clients. Your people are the real strength of any charity. please pay them a fair wage. If we believe non-profits serving communities deserve the best people doing the best they can. Then we need to pay a competitive wage. We can not short cut our way to success in the non-profit sector. We need to invest in growth and advertising.  I have two  lingering questions from this talk  "Is there a limit on what is reasonable to pay a charity worker or CEO?" "Can chariti...

Thoughts on how SRE workers may have to respond to it with young people.  (I know I have posted a couple of Sex related post recently I will be posting other stuff soon.) I have just finished reading 50 shades of grey. As a youth worker and sex and relationship educator I felt it was important to have an informed opinion before September when teenagers/young people might ask me questions in lessons and youth clubs. I'm a little behind the trend but spending 12 weeks travelling did take me out of touch. I have always thought it is crucial to read a book itself before commenting on it. So even though it is not my typical book I thought it was important to read it.  To be clear this book was not written for young people, it is not meant to be read by young people and I don't believe E. L. James would be happy for young people to read it. But in my experience young people love to consume (watch, read, listen) media that adults do not want them to read. Eit...

Youth Session on   the Hunger Games   I did a session exploring the social issues of the Hunger Games and made the following mindmaps. A brilliant resource I used as part of the session has been made by TearFund, it explores what are the Real Hunger Games are in the world? Great eye opener for some young people   http://www.tearfund.org/en/news/extra/hunger_games/ . I have also written a blog post about Love in the Hunger Games  with suggestions for Sex and Relationship Educators to use The Hunger Games as a starting point for discussing relationships with young people.  Did a youth session on @ TheHungerGames & asked the young people why they thought the Capitol organised the #HungerGames t.co/urKc5rhr — GarethBlindfishideas (@blindfishideas) March 29, 2012 Then asked the young people why they thought the districts did not resist the #HungerGames ? t.co/eiL2z6UG — GarethBlindfishideas (@blindfishideas) March 29, 2012 ...

A hand at a difficult moment When I teach about safeguarding and dealing with child protection disclosures one aspect gets a lot of people thinking. What do you say when you meet a child, young person or vulnerable adult who disclosures something sensitive. Most of the safeguarding literature focus on what you shouldn't say "Don't ask closed questions" & "Don't promise confidentiality" for example. But what should people be saying? I recommend this little memory jog to provide 5 phrases that I think are useful (or needed) in most safeguarding disclosures.   No Secrets Sad to start with a negative but it is really important to quickly introduce this idea into the conversation. As soon as you feel that the conversation is moving into sensitive areas you should remind the individual that if you are worried about someone's safety you will have to pass on this information.  Thank yo...

False Accusation, safeguarding young people and staff Does the system protect the vunrable? When I read this BBC article I was alternatively annoyed, worried, relieved and concerned. Most of all it highlighted the importance of a robust useable safeguarding policy. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-16927479#story_continues_2 Most accusations against teachers in Wales are dropped I was annoyed that teachers are getting their careers ruined by false accusation. Rex Phillips, from NASUWT is quoted in the BBC article as saying. "It's every teacher's worst nightmare to have a false allegation made against them. Their reputation is damaged and they often find it hard to go back to work, even though they've been completely exonerated. "We just want teachers to be treated fairly. Once an allegation is made, a teacher is often suspended immediately without even a bit of consideration given to if it can be true or not. "There's no 'innocent until proven guilt...

Once a year at The Light Project we do a sponsored event to raise money for the work we do. If you didn't know I work as a community youth worker for The Light Project. The work we do with young people in Chester is targeted to help the young people develop holistically and to provide a safe place for them to go in the evening where they can meet positive adult role models.  This year I am doing a 10 mile dawn walk along the River Dee in Chester, Starting at 6am! To make it slightly different and unusual I will be doing the walk as a photo walk taking pictures as I go.  As a thank you everyone who sponsors me will get a link to the photos I take and if you sponsor me £5 or more you will get a personal unique photo printed out from my dawn time walk.                                                           ...