Working with Young Women
Activities for Exploring Personal, Social and Emotional Issues
Second Edition
Vanessa Rogers
Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia
First published in 2006 by the National Youth Agency
Second edition published in 2010
by Jessica Kingsley Publishers
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London N1 9JB, UK
and
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www.jkp.com
Copyright Vanessa Rogers 2006, 2010
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84905 095 1
eISBN 978 0 85700 372 0
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Donna Lancaster, Ann McKay, Hertfordshire Youth Connexions, Helen Walker (Cambridgeshire Youth Service), Naomi Little (Youth Matters), Carol Hawkes, Gillian Porter, Deborah Mulroney, Joshua Oakes-Rogers (Simon Balle School), Darren Godfrey (Essex Youth Service) and Geoff Fisher (Peterborough Youth Service), all of whose suggestions for activities are included in this book.
Thanks also to any other youth workers or personal advisers not specifically named who have contributed ideas or been a part of the projects mentioned.
About the Author
Vanessa is a qualified teacher and youth worker with a masters degree in Community Education. She has over ten years experience within the Hertfordshire Youth Service both at practitioner and management levels. Prior to achieving national recognition for her work Vanessa managed a wide range of services for young people including a large youth centre and targeted detached projects for Hertfordshire County Council. She devises and delivers professional development training programmes and writes for Youth Work Now. In addition she has been commissioned to devise training packs for a wide range of organisations, including the BBC.
This book is one of 19 resources written by Vanessa to support the development of creative youth work and social education.
Her website www.vanessarogers.co.uk gives detailed information about further titles, training and consultancy visits.
Introduction
For me, work with young women continues to be one of the most important as well as one of the most enjoyable aspects of youth work. It has been great fun to pull together a hugely diverse collection of resources specifically devised to engage, motivate and meet the needs of young women within a single-gender environment.
Using group work, discussions, art and role-play, the book offers ideas to help build self-esteem, confidence and assertiveness skills. Issues considered include body image, positive relationships and peer choices, as well as work around alcohol and healthy lifestyles.
This resource can be used in a wide range of settings, not just confined to the youth club. The suggestions work equally well in schools, pupil referral units, youth offending teams and voluntary sector youth groups. The activities are appropriate for all young women aged 1319, include suggestions for those who have special educational needs, and allow adaptations for one-to-one work.
This revised 2010 edition of Working with Young Women includes additional new resources, updates some of the most popular tried and tested activities and offers a whole new chapter: Chapter 6, Gender and Stereotypes.
Getting started
These are short games and tasks to use at the start of each session to encourage the young women to start working together. Warm-ups are a particularly good way of introducing a topic to a group and to start the process of getting to know each other. You can also use them to break up different sections of your programme and to re-energise the group and move discussions on.
Self-esteem and body image
Looking at body image and encouraging young women to feel good about themselves is important. These activities offer a range of ways to encourage reflection and promote discussion.
To maximise learning, make sure that you have assessed individual need, and that the group is established enough for the young women to feel safe and comfortable sharing and discussing feelings together. Allow plenty of time for these sessions to work through the issues raised, thoroughly.
Make sure you have details of any additional services available in the area, for example youth counselling, so that you can support young women into accessing these if and when appropriate.
Healthy lifestyles
Concerns about young women binge drinking and misusing alcohol are widely publicised. This section offers opportunities to engage young women in looking at alcohol, healthy eating and other health-related issues, giving information, exploring values and building skills to make healthy lifestyle choices.
It also has ideas to offer information about sexual health and sexually transmitted infections and explores the ethics around making choices.
Positive relationships
This section focuses on the complex area of personal relationships, including friendships and family as well as partners.
It is important to review contracts and agreements made within the group before you start. Additionally, this is a good time to reinforce confidentiality boundaries so that the young women are clear.
You may need parental consent before some of the sessions, depending on the age of the young women and the issues you plan to cover. This ensures that parents are informed of the programme and any cultural issues or areas of concern are resolved together.
Gender and stereotypes
This section offers ideas to celebrate womanhood and look at positive role models in a wider context. It will enable young women to start to look at the wider issues for women, including equality in the workplace and gender stereotyping.
Endings
The activities and ideas in this section aim to end your group on a high note and consolidate work done. They encourage the young women to reflect on learning and evaluate the issues they have looked at.
