Huddersfield to Sheffield with an early stop off in Wooldale.
We are being greeted with wonderful spreads in each place and any ideas that we had of perhaps losing weight on this ride to London are being quickly dispelled in the face of such welcomes and generosity. We are also seeing buildings that have been carefully cared for in order to preserve spaces that groups can come together to wait and reflect and consider what actions are needed or are possible Wooldale was a small historic meeting perched on top of a hill. Sheffield is a thriving modern meeting with a bustling sense of activity. In each meeting there are conversations - exchanges with people we have never met about their concerns and our own. Everywhere we go we are hearing people speak about the growth in food banks in their areas and the cuts to charities that were doing good work to serve vulnerable people. We are gathering stories on postcards and carrying these with us carefully as these are the stories of people who often struggle to get heard. Today, I spoke with a woman I had never met and she spoke of a charity that had been supporting several people with severe mental illness in her area. it had just had to close due to lack of funds. There is a truth to the fact that when communities need to work together they can work together. In the face of such frequent stories that seem to represent such backward steps, the challenge is to not succumb to feeling overwhelmed and to believing that nothing can be done or that someone else should be doing it. The challenge seems to involve finding small steps, some positive way of engaging with others on actions that seem important. And all of that determination to take action depends on individuals (children who become adults) having a sense of feeling empowered, having had enough experiences that their efforts lead to results that matter, or that in the face of set backs they can bounce back.
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We have two main groups of riders at the moment - the not so slow and the not so fast. The not so slow group include our 4 teens and the electric bike owners and the not so fast group includes the group who prefer to walk some of the hills!
We all get there in the end in hare and tortoises fashion Today we were travelling from Keighley via Bradford Cycling City - we were greeted with a wonderful curry and took a little time to wander around the enormous historic buildings of the Bradford City Centre We were greeted by journalists and even completed a radio interview for their community radio station. City riding is quite a challenge and demands a lot more concentration individually and as a group. There is so much to take in and lots of decisions to make fast. Each small group has a leader who is responsible for navigating and a back stop to make sure no one gets left behind. We are slowly learning the discipline of the group but when we get exit from roads to cycle ways we all breathe a sigh of relief. We eventually discovered Huddersfield meeting - and it was good to rest a little. Huddersfield Meeting is in a large building that had once housed a large adult-education project at the top of the hill. We were joined there by the local cycling group that reaches out to many people with disabilities in the area including those with visual impairments using tandems. I have been thinking about Andy's sharing in meeting yesterday - he spoke of having seen a road called MEWITH or ME-WITH. It is apparent to me as a psychologist this sense of self and this sense of community is something that actively needs nurture and something that we should not take for granted. But I think we are taking the emergence of this sense of care for community for granted and I think we are underestimating the impact of exclusion of individuals on the longer term outcomes for communities. I am concerned at what I see happening in schools - developmental thinking has progressively been squeezed out as schools are over assessed on their abilities to deliver the top academic results for some rather than on results for all ranges of ability. The result is a very top down culture that leads to quiet exclusion of those who are most in need of really skilled teaching. So in order to be able to 'care for all', I think we need to examine some basic premises around the purposes of our education system. What skills and attitudes will our children really most need to be able to experience long term well-being? A great deal of research indicates that mental health and wellbeing depends upon having some really basic needs met: physical safety but also safety in relationships. So care for all in my view is not just an economic issue - it must involve attention to relationships at home, relationships at school, relationships at work and in the community. Communities that have space for hares and for tortoises with a commitment to everyone 'getting there' in the end. To avoid the traffic we are cycling cross country by many small by ways - lanes, canals, disused railway tracks.
The views are beautiful and we are discovering lots of places that in a car I would ordinarily pass by. Cartmel, then Bentham meeting yesterday nestling on a small hill, then into Settle. The morning ride took us through more glorious national park and to a tiny hamlet of Ayrton where we found another little meeting house lovingly restored and now a camping barn. We rested in the sunshine and heard some of the history and then cycled on again to Skipton along magical canal tow paths - some very bumpy and rutted that required lots of concentration and some beautifully prepared so we could speed along and enjoy the views more fully. After Skipton we had our first experience of city riding - as we made our way to Keighley - roads where we were not sure where to position ourselves on roundabouts and alarming experiences of cycle lanes suddenly ending with no where to go. Life in such cities looks very different from life in the countryside that we are moving on from. We know that there will be more of this to come as we go forward and that our cycling skills will be put to the test. We are hopeful that with some help of local knowledge there will nonetheless be pathways and routes to discover that will take us cheerily on our way. In each meeting we are discovering communities that have their own history and current life that involves caring for each other and for passers by like ourselves. I have been pondering what it takes for this sense of self and sense of community to emerge because it seems to me that these two polarities are important to a vision of caring for all. Breakfast on Day 2 was at Yealand Conyers meeting
One of the realities that a new vision for a welfare state that saw less division between rich and poor might be the advances in technology. Margaret Fell rode to London on a horse and she wrote letters. Bikes weren't thought of her in her day let alone phones. In our group we have a variety of bikes amongst which there are a number of electric bikes. As a proud owner of an electric bike and a phone I can say that they are both what can be described as a transformative technologies Without my electric bike it would have been hard for me to imagine taking this ride as the distances would have felt impossibly long and the hills impossibly steep, but with my electric bike I still have to travel the distance but I have that little bit of help. An electric bike has made it possible for one of our group who has a significant disability to be able to join us. Our phones have made it possible to plot safe routes off the main roads and to communicate with one another to ensure that all stay safe. In my work with the I Matter Project I have been really excited to discover how online learning can make it possible to get important ideas to busy professionals and families who it is traditionally very difficult to reach. Training can be accessible by phone and lap top. Coaching and consultations can take place at a distance massively reducing the needs to travel. However I have also clearly seen that as the results that are important are based on relationships online learning needs the personal contact and though phone and skype are really practical they cannot replace the value of sitting in a room together at least some of the time. So technology holds some of the answers but it does not hold all of the answers. If we know that technology can be used to assist healthy relationships but cannot replace the work of ensuring that the relationships are healthy then technology is a key part of the solution to Care for the Common Good - but not all of it. Day 1: We started off our journey gathering at Swarthmoor Hall - the home of Margaret Fell who was one of the earliest Quakers who with her husband Judge Fell supported George Fox in the earliest days of the Quaker Movement from the 1650's. Though the Quakers were just one of a number of groups who were resisting the state and claiming the right to think and worship differently, 360 years later they are still operating as a national organisation that attracts individuals who are looking for something a little bit different. Margaret Fell was someone who took action for things that mattered to her and on our Day 1 we sat together for 15 mins quiet contemplaion in the same hall where she would have eaten and gathered with other early Friends. The theme that emerged was journeys - and the sense of connection between the journey that Margaret Fell had taken and the one that we were taking. She had set off to London because of her concern at the way in which early Quakers were being persecuted. We were setting off with our different experiences of the way in which vulnerable people were being treated. We are a mixed age group of riders - 12yrs to 82 yrs - 16 core with a number of others joining us for just a part of the way and others who had come a long to wave us off. A lot of work and planning had gone into making this day possible. This years ride had emerged as an idea following the success of a 4 day pilgrimage last year from Brigflatts to Barrow. The questions we are holding: How do we respond to the changes in society that we are seeing that have become persecutory to those for example with disabilities who already have so much stacked against them? What can be done if the systems that were intended for good seem to be functioning in ways that are proving harmful? What would/could be some possible ways forward? First steps though involve getting to know one another and learning to ride safely up and down dale and along and across small lanes and busy roads. Every journey starts with small steps with some uncertainties about what will be learned on the way but we have chosen our message - on our high visibility jackets - and we now have the support with it of our Area Meeting - We are the Ride for Equality and for the Common Good We CAN afford to Care for all. Swarthmoor to London - 21st July to 6th August 2018 One of the roots of the Adult-Child Well-Being 'I Matter' Project has been the influences of Quakersim on my childhood, teens, young adulthood, and life as a parent. Quakerism has provided a spiritual home for me and a place in which I was supported in learning to think and question whilst also having a sense of connection to and responsibility for the greater whole George Fox a teacher from the Midlands in the 1650's travelled up to the Cumbrian area where he gathered together a group of people who he encouraged to study and reflect and think for themselves. The message was: you have heard what the others think but 'what canst THOU say?' Another well known Quaker message: Religion is not here to take men and women out of the world, but is to help them to live better within it. Learning to think for oneself is not always comfortable. It involves being in touch with contradiction and conflicts and uncertainty. The challenge is to dig in and listen to the inner knowing. It often involves facing fear - what will happen if I get in touch with what I really think?? What will happen if I actually speak up about what I think?? This journey is particularly important in relationships - when relationships are not feeling healthy but you are not sure why. This can be relationships between adults and children, between adult partners and in work settings. It is not comfortable recognising that if there is going to be any change you have to be willing to take action - as just hoping for the best may not be enough. Speaking up can involve some conflict and resistance and rejection. The early Quakers found themselves thrown in jail for expressing what they really thought and thankfully the result is not always so harsh, However the truth is that speaking up is not easy. I think however that this early Quaker training was a key element in my process of coming to know that something was seriously amiss in the way we were working with children and families where there is challenging complex behaviour, and the struggle to understand was key to what later emerged as the I Matter Project and to the idea embedded within the approach that there is almost always a personal journey involved in working out exactly what is wanted and how to get there. Quaker thinking was also key for a group of Kendal and Sedbergh Quakers and a group from the Southern Marches who discovered they could no longer sit comfortably with the direction that public pollcies were taking with regard to the care of the vulnerable in our society. So through a process of sharing came the conviction that there was a need to renew the vision on which the welfare state was born. What would a renewed vision of welfare look like? How can we use our resources more wisely and effctively? What role do we each have to play? How do we each get support with our concerns? Now through that careful discernment process, concern about the care of the vulnerable is coming to fruits in action and along with others I will setting off with family and friends on a ride from Swarthmoor to London to speak up about this concern. We will be travelling over 300 miles by bike and by public transport stopping off at Quaker meeting houses on the way. It seems a long way but I am looking forward to beautiful english countryside and lots of fun and sharing. Our intention is to add our voices to those who believe that the way forward in our communties must involve policies and individual actions that serve the Common Good not just the needs of a privileged few. For me because the process of speaking up has proved a very challenging but also a very rewarding process, this is going to be a Quaker Journey and an I Matter Journey and a For the Common Good Journey. If you would like to join us for a bit of this ride you can find out more here. What might such a journey be about for you? Here is our route map Day 1-9 And the route for Day 10-13 click here for short purpose description We have been looking at our own pilot data to check that the courses are having the intended impact. The learning outcomes of the I Matter Foundation A Online course are as follows. Participants will:
Foundation A Course Feedback Results are as follows Participants: To date, the Foundation A FULL online course has been trialled by parents and professionals within South Cumbria and Lancashire with the following roles and responsibilities: Parents of autistic children (2) Parents of adopted children (2) Deputy Headteachers (1) SENCOs (1) Class Teachers (5) Teaching Assistants (5) Post-Adoption Support Social Workers (5) Clinical Psychologist (1) To date, 21 out of 22 participants who have completed the full 20 hour 8 week online course felt that the learning outcomes had been definitely or mostly achieved. Here is some of the feedback from participants Has the course help you achieve the learning outcomes Definitely ...in my view course has absolutely achieved all the learning outcomes but for me in particular it has really challenged the impact my own attitudes and behaviours have on the well-being of the people around me . Definitely.. all of the material constantly reinforces the understanding of how early trauma or other complexities impact on a child's emotional development and the way their brain processes information in the world around them. Definitely..thanks very much for the course, it was really excellent, and I've noticed my practice is much improved with children with complex needs. Who would benefit from this course? My TA has signed up to do it. All the parents at a our school would benefit. Any parent My partner!!!!! Every single person who works with children, not just complex children. It should be compulsory. Would you recommend this course to your colleagues? Yes definitely. I was already curious and emphatic towards all the children in my care but unfortunately all too often I see teachers or staff who are so stressed themselves or so controlling they forget to be curious about the children in their care and Absolutely. I think it would be great if we were all singing from the same hymn sheet. Would you recommend this course to parents? Yes. Parents always come to us saying that their children are really badly behaved at home. I have noticed that some of the parents that we deal with have not had the secure relationships at home to be role models. If they were given support in understand perhaps this could change? Would you recommend this course to parents of children with complex needs? Yes, definitely. My work is all with adopted children and their families who are dealing with attachment difficulties and trauma. I think the model is empowering to parents and enables them to see they can change their responses and make a difference. What was learning online like for you? It has been better than I thought .The videos were really helpful in having, almost, face to face teaching to engage with. I have really enjoyed this learning online. I have been able to take my learning at my own pace and go over sections that I don't feel I have fully understood. I really like the online system. We introduced the Foundation A LITE Course recently to make the core content available to parents and very stretched professionals with a bit less intensive study requirements Feedback on this shorter 10 hour course is just being gathered. Feedback on the Easy Start I Matter Essentials Course has been as follows: 9 feedbacks completed to date from 3 parents and 6 professionals (however 3 professionals completing for personal reasons). Some were completing for professional development only, some due to state of crisis. They were living with children of all ages. All who completed felt it was very relevant and helpful to their role. When asked what they liked about the course, sample comments were as follows: I just loved how it was all presented and everything. Thank you so much, It has really helped me, and it has really helped me understand my own children and most of all myself. It made me reflect on the children's behaviour in my class and realise that they perhaps have more issues than I realised. It has given me the opportunity to re-evaluate the way that I should respond to these children. Short clips which gave keys ideas. Useful having the sentence/ key idea on flip chart. My husband & I returned to the clips & talked over our thoughts - really useful to have a structure to our conversation when we were running out of ways forward. I wish every parent could have access to this course as soon, or before they had children, I wish I had seen this years ago Here are some summary reasons you should consider investing in I Matter Training * The courses are designed to meet the universal needs of typical and complex, universal and targeted clients and professional services * You and your staff will come to understand why taking care of personal well-being is one of the best ways of being effective in your important adult roles * You and your staff will understand the significance of the parental role and the importance of parent-child attachments for educational and mental health outcomes * You and your staff will have something immediate and practical to offer to parents to support parent education * There is a structured plan for your school or service and clear steps to support staff and parent education to build understanding and skills over the longer run. For further information on courses click here Over the weekend, we watched flood waters tearing through our town. So we called in at the Town Hall that was operating as an evacuation centre to see if we could help. The upshot of this was that we then got to spend an enjoyable evening with a refugee Mum and a delightful 3 year old who had come out shopping 36 hours earlier and still couldn't get home to Grange. They had not had their house destroyed but they were tired and weary and appreciative of some simple home pleasures.
Over the last few days we have heard lots of stories of deeper misery counteracted by people working together to help. However many questions are now being asked about what was really needed to stop the flooding? More flood defences? More climate change action? What actions are really needed? There are no easy answers. Trying to figure out how to respond to a flood is a good metaphor for the starting points of the I Matter Project. In my practice as a Clinical Psychologist I have seen a constant flood of families feeling bewildered in the face of challenging behaviour. 8 month waiting lists have been a common feature of my last 15 years of practice. Many of the families on those lists face very similar challenges. I feel in a small way I have done my best to help. However, so very often it has felt like having a teaspoon under the Niagara Falls. Shifting challenging behaviour or addressing mental health needs doesn't usually happen without some careful upstream thought and planning about the reasons for the flooding. Over the years, after much puzzling about how many complex ideas fitted together, I have come to the view that the brain science allows us to now be fairly clear about what contributes to the current flood of mental health and behavioural difficulties. We can also be quite clear about what is really needed, to make an impact. However because these contributing reasons are nonetheless complex, meaningful action to make a difference requires an upstream thoughtful early intervention rather than a reactive after the event approach. This upstream approach needs however to be based on careful evidence, a planned strategy and teamwork. Tackling this issue has truthfully often seemed a little like being a tiny tug boat trying to shift the titanic or a tiny beaver trying to build a fragile bridge. It has often seemed crazy to even try, unlikely to be successful but nonetheless important to have a go. So I have wrestled and wrestled trying to find ideas, structures and processes that could be capable of enaging people in working together towards the types of upstream changes that in my view are needed. In this journey of trying to discover a meaningful response I went back to my roots as a teacher. Having figured out how the basic psychological ideas could fit together I then realised - to my shock - that I was going to have to learn how to run a business to get the ideas out to others - and without the administrative logistics doing me in! There have been more hurdles and barriers than I ever imagined would be possible. Many will have heard me saying 'I haven't died yet...'. The good news is that things have been moving slowly forward and there is now a manageable plan that my small team and I believe is capable of sharing ideas and engaging people in working together to take useful action Starting in january 2016, there will be a 3 term rolling program in place. My key goal with this process is to see if there could be an alternative approach - and to see whether it is possible to engage adults of all levels of responsibility in taking a look at what they are seeing when they see child mental health needs and challenging behaviour with fresh eyes. The training and process provides a set of self-assessment measures for parents and professional services as well as guidance about the skills that adults must acquire to address these issues, and support and accountability systems to help those who are motivated to work with others to try to get there. I know that changes in challenging behaviour can and do happen through this process. However there are no quick fixes. Adults have to commit to the inner and outer work involved and finding ways to build engagement and persistence really matter. The very good news about the I Matter approach is that a synthesis of all the evidence strongly recommends that one of the first key steps involved in bringing about these shifts in challenging behaviour involves taking care of YOU - and investing in the development of your own understanding and leadership skills first (Hence 'I Matter'). Hooray! So this is a win-win approach. You get to learn lots of really interesting and useful things on the way. I certainly have had a lot of fun alongside the challenges, along the way. Our key steps are as follows: Step 1: An I Matter Q - a reflective questionnaire that will get you thinking Step 2: Foundation Course Level 1 A and Level 1 B Step 3: Intermediate Course Level 1 A and Level 1 B Advanced courses and practitioner training. These three steps are preceeded by some Taster Email Courses including the Five Steps to Success and the I Matter Essentials Course. PPS: If you want to take a look at the courses available click here A lot has happened in the last half term! * We have developed a really strong partnership with the Centre for Adoption Support (CFAS) and are currently working together to train 15 of their staff members in the core I Matter Framework as a foundation for their practices. Staff have attended an introductory workshop and are now working through the Level 1 Foundation Online Course. We have a Level 1 consolidation day coming up on 25th November 2015. * I am thoroughly enjoying my office base at Ghyllside School In Kendal and have recently started working with Vicki Boggon an ex-headteacher who feels as passionately as I do about the need to support schools and get these ideas out to a wider audience. * We ran a successful conference on the 8th October 2015, triggered by the Future in Mind NHS document which is informing local planing decisions. * We have been puzzling and puzzling about how to design a business model that can help keep us financially afloat AND deliver content to professionals and parents in a fashion that can help deliver meaningful results. We know the resources are good but the systems we are working into are under so much pressure that it is not at all inevitable that results will be seen just because a school or service or family takes part in a course. As a social enterprise, we know that selling into this system just in order to sell is not what we are about. * We have puzzled about the process of sustainability and building capacity and about how to provide clear guidance about the steps that must be followed and provide the long-term support that we know is needed to achieve results. We have concluded that the internet is our friend and that via it we can get resources to people who are commonly very hard to reach. We have also concluded however that as the I Matter Project posters create so much impact, we want to see them out on classroom walls and clinics even if those services have not yet got a full understanding of what it is all about. * We have built some simple pathways for schools and services, professionals, and parents. We are working on the pathway and resources for young people. We want to build a network of organisations committed to strategic actions to develop parent understanding and competence. We have been trialling our School Service Audit tool, which forms the foundations of the I Matter Quality Mark We are ambitious but we are aware that the mountain we want to climb is really really huge! Watch this space! I remember about 4 years ago when I realised that though I knew that as a framework of ideas I Matter was powerfully practical and helpful, I had got no very effective method of getting it out to others. I remember in particular one day teaching a face to face class and realising that I had been repeating the same introductory ideas over and over again. The groups were always different and approached the materials as afresh so it was never dull but I wanted to take some people further. What I didn't realise was how big the next mountain would be to climb. Indeed, over the last few years, everytime I felt I was getting somewhere it turned out there was something else I had to learn... In fact the process often reminded me of the song we sang as children going up mountains in the Lake District: The Bear climbed up to the mountain, the bear climbed up the big mountain, the bear climbed up the big mouuuuunnnnnnnnttiiiiiin to see what she could see. And what do you think she saw, (and what do you think she saw?) The next big peak of the mountain, the next big peak of the mountain, the next big peak of the mountain was all that she could see. So what do you think she did...(so what do you think she did) She climbed on up the big mountain (she climbed on up the big mountain).... However slowly, slowly the view has got clearer or to use a jigsaw puzzle analogy the pieces have been coming together and patterns and pathways have emerged. Now, finally what is happening is really very exciting. I sometimes think it is the problem solving aspect that keeps me going most - I love figuring things out and finding the sense and order from the chaos Just like starting with a big 1000 piece jigsaw without any picture to go from, I was convinced that the pieces would fit together and that the connections could be found. The challenge was to find the links between symptoms, between diagnostic categories, between client groups, between intervention styles. The challenge once the patterns were found was to find a way of engaging systems so that they felt excited to participate in discovering these links and patterns for themselves. Last week I had session 3 with a parent who had arrived very hostile and angry about and towards her son. I had offered a standard 3 session I Matter psycho-educational series - an opportunity to learn and think together about what was happening. Midway through the session she sat back and looked at me: 'it's not about my son, is it? It's about how I manage him and about how I manage to keep myself calmer, isn't it?' That to me is an example of the fruit of an I Matter psycho-educational approach. It is not rocket science, but it is powerful. Responsibilty starts to sit where it needs to sit, and as a result, positive changes happen. Today I spoke with a teacher who has been trialling the Essentials course to help the parents of her class make some similar small steps forward. How exciting to find such a hunger for more understanding and how exciting to now have the structures in place to make those next steps possible for so many more. There are now lots of structures and processes in place: i. There is a membership and training structure for parents and carers ii. There is a membership and training structure for professionals and iii. There is a membership structure for schools-services to support an I Matter Quality Mark Yay! I am loving my new office! I am also looking forward to seeing where things may next go. If you would like to find out more about how to get involved, why not check out our courses |
Dr Cathy BetoinClinical Psychologist, Teacher and Parent - and social entrepreneur Archives
July 2019
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