Self-Esteem group programme October – December 2022

The Brighter Futures project run 1:1 sessions for children with social, emotional and behaviour difficulties’ as well as subjected to issues such as bereavement, poor self-esteem and trauma. Self-Esteem has been the target issue this term. The programme consists of a 6 week intervention, weekly visits for an hour, in schools delivering to classes and small groups. Low self-esteem is playing a big part in the social, emotional and behavioural difficulties we are seeing in children this present day. It is affecting academic performance therefore jeopardising the child’s brighter future.

To date, the team remain at capacity with caseloads and the waiting list for support continues to grow. Once a referral has been put in, the case gets evaluated then allocated to various members of the team. Many of the issues or concerns that appear to be referred in are low level and may only require drop-in support from the well-being workers. Therefore, the purpose of the group work is to eliminate the low-level issues within children or young people before they escalate into requiring 1:1 support therefore taking away the strain of the waiting list for 1:1 support, allowing those more complex cases to get the support they need. The group work is also a great opportunity to highlight any other children who may have slipped under the radar and require 1:1 support.

The activities are designed to be engaging and fun therefore ensuring the learners fully interact and get involved with the session. Each week there is a different activity and theme related to self-esteem.

I can appreciate my self-image

 This is the first session of the programme. The first time the learners get to meet the practitioners and learn more about the frequent visits to come. This is the session where the practitioners get an idea of the understanding of ‘Self-Esteem’ amongst the learners as well as the extent of the knowledge they have on impacts on self-esteem and repercussions of unkind behaviour towards others. This session, the children draw their self-portraits with the means of appreciating themselves, the way they look and accepting their personalities.

I can highlight something positive about my identity and individuality

 The second session of the programme allows learners to accept and love their own individuality and identity. Society today places a great deal of pressure, especially on children and young people, to act a specific way, look a certain way and materialistic items and lifestyle is placed on a pedestal. However, the message behind this session is to encourage children to note crumble under peer pressure and change themselves but more so to celebrate themselves exactly how they are, what their interests are and what foundations build their individuality and personality. The task within this session is to make something out of foil that represents them.

I can create positive affirmations for myself and understand their purpose – Session 3 explores positive and negative mind set with learners. It was vital to encourage learners to understand that a negative mind set greatly impacts their self-esteem and changing that mind set can be difficult. Without the tools to remain in a positive mind set, having high self-esteem would be extremely difficult to sustain. Within this

session, we taught the learners about affirmations, their purpose and how to use them. The children created key-rings as a keepsake with a positive affirmation in there personalised and chosen by them.

I can understand the impact of giving my friends positive comments about themselves. I can understand the impact of receiving positive comments

 Throughout the programme we encourage children to be kind to themselves and others. This session allows children to be kind to one another and promoting high self-esteem amongst peers whilst having their own lifted. For this activity – children were given envelopes in which they could decorate and customise. They then had strips of paper and had to go around the class/group and ask peers to write something nice about them on the strips of paper and place in the envelope. At the end of the activity, every child had given out positive comments as well as received them. The children were able to read all their positive comments from their envelopes at the end. We held a discussion on how it felt to read all those comments but more importantly, how did it feel to know they have put a smile on someone else’s face.

I can work as a team to create a positive story about us highlighting our strengths and talents

 This session focuses on enabling learners to highlight and celebrate their own individual strengths and talents. This could range from strengths within their personality e.g kindness, wisdom or helpfulness to talents such as football, art and music. Learners with low self-esteem may find this task particularly difficult as it requires them to talk about themselves in a positive manner with others. The learners had to work together to create a comic strip about superheroes. The superheroes in the story are themselves but they had to choose a strength or talent each to act as the superpower and save the day.

Amazing me

 The final session is actively promoting all aspects of the programme in one. It explores, kindness, self-love, friendship and celebrating oneself. Each learner was given either a bag or a t-shirt. They had to then decorate the item with positive words about themselves. Once that aspect of the task was complete, they then had to go around and ask peers to write something nice about them on their item as well.

Feedback

One school provided a 100% score 5 rating on their feedback forms. They would also recommend the project to other schools. The comment they provided is as followed:

“Both Anna and Jess were fantastic with all the children. All sessions were well resourced and thought out. All learners (including difficult) engaged. A great resource. Please come back next year. Thank you”.

Another school also provided a 100% score 5 rating on their feedback forms. They would also recommend the project to other schools. The comment they provided is as followed: “The workshops were excellent and brilliant for discussions around and raising self-esteem in the class. Anna and Jess were excellent. They formed amazing relationships with the children in such a short space of time! We all enjoyed working with them and the children benefited greatly from the workshops. Thank you, Faith in Families and Anna and Jess, for these sessions.”