Do you work with or support young people who are leaving school this summer and are not sure what they want to do next? Helm might be right for them!
Helm is Dundee’s largest youthwork charity and we’ve been supporting young people from Helm for over 40 years. We support young people to build life skills, gain SQA qualifications and secure work placements. Ultimately, we prepare them for the next step on their journey into adulthood, whether that’s employment or further education.
Read on to find out how our friendly team support young people.
Helm Life Skills
After starting at Helm all young people will go into a Life Skills group where the focus is on personal development, confidence building, communication, team work and things like cooking, budgeting, self-regulation, health and wellbeing, etc.
There is no time limit for how long a young person is in this group.
Every week the Helm delivery team have a chat about how each young person is getting on (informed by observation, interaction and regular 1-1’s with the young people) and when they feel a young person is ready the young person will be progressed onto Helm’s Employability group. This could be after 1 week for some young people or after 6 for others, it completely depends on the young person and how they get on. The team also always check to see if another provider would suit the young person better if they are not progressing well within Helm.
Helm Opportunities
In Helm every young person will have an opportunity to take advantage of the huge variety of resources we have available onsite including:
- Breakfast Club – toast, yogurts, fruit juice, tea & coffee available each morning to every young person and Tuesdays is Hot Roll day with things like sausages, black pudding, eggs, etc.
- Art Therapy – Helm has an in-house art therapist who offers weekly group sessions which are fun and creative and begin to build a relationship with the art therapist. There is an open door policy which means that the young people can use the art therapy room as a safe space as needed throughout the day. The art therapist offers 1-1 sessions to support a young person to deal with individual barriers, particularly around emotions.
- Kitchen – offering basic cooking skills and leads to conversations about healthy eating and budgeting among other things.
- Allotment – an opportunity to get out in the fresh air and get stuck in, what is grown in the allotment is cooked in the Helm kitchen.
- Gym – an in-house gym encourages young people to be physically and mentally healthy.
- Lavish Lounge – an in-house salon where the young people can gain cosmetology skills and qualifications – vocational learning
- Helm Autocare – Helm’s commercial garage where the young people can gain mechanic skills and qualifications – vocational learning.
- Trades Unit – Helm’s trades unit where the young people can gain basic construction skills and qualifications – vocational learning.
Helm Employability
In Employability the focus moves onto supporting the young people to learn more about the world of work, what is expected and what their strengths and ambitions would work well with. Support is given to complete SQA’s, create CV’s, learn how to search and apply for jobs and how to do well in interviews.
Helm Placements
When a young person is ready they will be offered a work placement with a local employer. This gives them an opportunity to learn about the world of work first hand, discover if the industry they are interested in is right for them and gain experiences they can discuss in interviews.
The young person is very much involved in choosing their placement. Once out on placement they are supported throughout with at least weekly check-ins to ensure they are getting the most out of the opportunity.
If a young person doesn’t succeed in or like a placement there are opportunities to change to a different placement in most cases.
Do you support young people that you think would benefit from finding out more about Helm?
Every young person has the opportunity to come to Helm for a Looksee where they will get a tour of the building, a chance to meet some of the team and learn more about the options available at Helm. A young person can do as many Looksees as they like. They can come on their own, with a worker, a family member of whoever they need to make them feel supported.
Want to find out more? We’d love to hear from you! You can email hello@helmtraining.co.uk or ring the main office on 01382 224464 and one of our friendly team will be happy to help.
You might also find it useful to share the following link with young people directly: YP Pdf about Helm FINAL (helmtraining.co.uk).