Diver Tom Daley has been offered life coaching by British Swimming, the governing body for diving, after being taken out of school. Daley, aged 14, completed the Beijing Olympics in 7th place last year and whilst he has many fans outside of school, those in school have been causing him trouble and bullying him by threatening to break his legs.
Whilst life coaching won’t stop the boys at school from their taunts, it can help those that have been bullied re-build their confidence, understand the situation better and deal with future incidents in a more positive way. Although Daley has been very successful in his career so far, it doesn’t mean that he isn’t affected by the bullying. Being bullied is a highly unpleasant experience and extremely upsetting for anyone, whoever they are. Daley, who is taking 9 GCSE’s, is having his education affected by others at school, most likely jealous of his success. Whatever their reasons, it leaves Daley in an awkward situation and one that could easily damage his future prospects.
If you know of anyone being bullied who would like some help dealing with the situation and rebuilding their confidence, then please get in touch with AlterEgo. We specialise in coaching young people and especially teenagers in issues just like these. Alternatively, please visit Beat Bullying for some helpful advice and tips.
Suzannah Wallace
AlterEgo - Inspiring and Motivating Young People
www.alteregocoaching.co.uk
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Will Darling Help Young People Off the Scrapheap?
So the Budget is out and Alistair Darling has announced Labour’s plans to get us out of the financial mess this country has got into. Included in this is a £3bn jobs package to help young people get into work so that they are not “abandoned to a future on the scrapheap”.
Unemployment is due to top 3 million by the end of the year and young people lacking experience and training are facing a future of doom. Whilst some people see living off benefits as an easy life, the reality is not quite so rosy. Living off around £45 a week is a hard task for even the most frugal and although housing benefits can help, they are not available to all. For most young people living at home, they do not feature but instead, put a pressure on their parents to keep providing when they too are facing a future of financial insecurity.
Being employed is not just about money. Going out to work gives people a sense of purpose. Without it, life can be very dull indeed, especially when you don’t have any money to do anything with. Looking for work means filling out application after application and in this current climate, it can mean facing rejection after rejection. Alongside no social life, this can lead to people losing confidence and feeling depressed and for young people, stuck in a vicious circle of not being able to get a job without experience and not being able to get experience without a job, it can seem like a daunting task and a bleak future. Their sense of excitement at being able to get a job and earn money becomes replaced with disillusionment and low self-esteem. In some cases, it becomes replaced by a life of crime. If we thought this country had problems with its youth before, then I dread to think what might happen in the future.
Darling’s plans are to offer recruitment subsidies to companies taking on 18-24 year olds who have been out of work for more than 12 months. Employers would receive a 20 per cent payment up-front and receive the remaining amount only when the worker was “settled”. Altogether, the government hope to create more than 250,000 jobs over the next two years.
This is all very well and good but where the 250,000 jobs are going to come from and how they are going to finance this idea when Darling’s last welfare-to-work project had to be rescued by a cash handout, I have no idea. But the thought is there and the fact that young people’s futures are being considered at all can only be a good thing.
Having worked with long-term young unemployed people, I have seen the affects of being out of work and how they deal with that. However, I have also seen how getting a job after such a long time can also prove difficult. After months of doing nothing and feeling very low, moving into a work environment where they need to learn new skills fast can be daunting and dealing with the pressures can feel extremely hard when your confidence levels are at rock bottom. All of these issues can be helped by a couple of sessions of coaching and in order to ensure that these young people do become “settled” in their work, the government would do well to invest in some coaches. The cost of coaching compared to the cost of having to re-recruit for the positions of those who cannot cope with the work environment is minimal. And for those that have given up their search being unable to deal with the rejections, it would help them to build their confidence and regain their aspirations.
We need to inspire the youth of this country because they will one day be running it. It's a lovely idea to say that all young people will be given either a job or a training position in the next couple of years but I'm not sure how the reality of that will work - hopefully well, but to really ensure that the scheme works, inspire them first and reignite their motivation. It's no use pushing someone on a training course they don't want to do or putting them in jobs they can't cope with. Build their confidence and raise their aspirations first so that they want to do well and can cope with whatever is thrown at them. Otherwise, I fear, many young people will find themselves on the scrap heap.
Unemployment is due to top 3 million by the end of the year and young people lacking experience and training are facing a future of doom. Whilst some people see living off benefits as an easy life, the reality is not quite so rosy. Living off around £45 a week is a hard task for even the most frugal and although housing benefits can help, they are not available to all. For most young people living at home, they do not feature but instead, put a pressure on their parents to keep providing when they too are facing a future of financial insecurity.
Being employed is not just about money. Going out to work gives people a sense of purpose. Without it, life can be very dull indeed, especially when you don’t have any money to do anything with. Looking for work means filling out application after application and in this current climate, it can mean facing rejection after rejection. Alongside no social life, this can lead to people losing confidence and feeling depressed and for young people, stuck in a vicious circle of not being able to get a job without experience and not being able to get experience without a job, it can seem like a daunting task and a bleak future. Their sense of excitement at being able to get a job and earn money becomes replaced with disillusionment and low self-esteem. In some cases, it becomes replaced by a life of crime. If we thought this country had problems with its youth before, then I dread to think what might happen in the future.
Darling’s plans are to offer recruitment subsidies to companies taking on 18-24 year olds who have been out of work for more than 12 months. Employers would receive a 20 per cent payment up-front and receive the remaining amount only when the worker was “settled”. Altogether, the government hope to create more than 250,000 jobs over the next two years.
This is all very well and good but where the 250,000 jobs are going to come from and how they are going to finance this idea when Darling’s last welfare-to-work project had to be rescued by a cash handout, I have no idea. But the thought is there and the fact that young people’s futures are being considered at all can only be a good thing.
Having worked with long-term young unemployed people, I have seen the affects of being out of work and how they deal with that. However, I have also seen how getting a job after such a long time can also prove difficult. After months of doing nothing and feeling very low, moving into a work environment where they need to learn new skills fast can be daunting and dealing with the pressures can feel extremely hard when your confidence levels are at rock bottom. All of these issues can be helped by a couple of sessions of coaching and in order to ensure that these young people do become “settled” in their work, the government would do well to invest in some coaches. The cost of coaching compared to the cost of having to re-recruit for the positions of those who cannot cope with the work environment is minimal. And for those that have given up their search being unable to deal with the rejections, it would help them to build their confidence and regain their aspirations.
We need to inspire the youth of this country because they will one day be running it. It's a lovely idea to say that all young people will be given either a job or a training position in the next couple of years but I'm not sure how the reality of that will work - hopefully well, but to really ensure that the scheme works, inspire them first and reignite their motivation. It's no use pushing someone on a training course they don't want to do or putting them in jobs they can't cope with. Build their confidence and raise their aspirations first so that they want to do well and can cope with whatever is thrown at them. Otherwise, I fear, many young people will find themselves on the scrap heap.
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
The Upheaval of Moving House
Since August last year, I have moved house 3 times. That’s not because I like moving around, it’s just how it worked out. Luckily, that's it for now.
The moving process wasn’t really all that difficult – I moved my stuff from storage to home and the rest of my belongings were already with me. However, it was still quite an upheaval and after 4 weeks, I’m just starting to find my feet.
Whilst I didn’t feel hugely stressed, my body told me a different story. My hands dried up, my skin went crazy and generally I felt a little lethargic. I guess it’s only natural as you adapt to your new surroundings and take it all in.
However, it led me to thinking about young people in care and how they must feel constantly moving around from home to home. Some young people are lucky and only go into care for a short while. Others spend years of their life shuffling from one place to another and generally having to call the place that they put their hat, home.
I have spoken to many young people in care and am constantly amazed at how many homes they have had to live in. I met one who had asked to be moved to a children’s home simply so that he could have some stability in his life. Many had lived in over 40 homes and were only in their early teens.
During this time, if they are lucky, they are in education and attempting to deal with all the pressures that other young people can find hard. They may have to move school if their new home is not close by and generally adapt constantly to living with people that they might not even get on with.
It’s no surprise therefore that young people in care have poor long-term outcomes. Almost two fifths achieve no GCSE’s at all whilst a further fifth obtain less than 5 GCSE’s. At age 19, almost a third of previously looked-after children are not in education, employment or training. (Official stats from The Poverty Site). These figures are shocking.
I believe that there are many people working to change the care system to try to improve those outcomes - it’s a difficult task with many processes involved. However, let’s hope they work something out that helps those young people, who have already been through hugely stressful situations to get them into care in the first place, to have a more stable childhood and a life where they can obtain as much as any other young person starting out in the world.
And meantime, I’m going to stop moaning about my granny hands and spots and think about how lucky I am. And then I'm going to call my local council and see what I can do that might help these young people achieve brighter and better futures.
Suzannah Wallace
AlterEgo
Inspiring and Motivating Young People
www.alteregocoaching.co.uk
The moving process wasn’t really all that difficult – I moved my stuff from storage to home and the rest of my belongings were already with me. However, it was still quite an upheaval and after 4 weeks, I’m just starting to find my feet.
Whilst I didn’t feel hugely stressed, my body told me a different story. My hands dried up, my skin went crazy and generally I felt a little lethargic. I guess it’s only natural as you adapt to your new surroundings and take it all in.
However, it led me to thinking about young people in care and how they must feel constantly moving around from home to home. Some young people are lucky and only go into care for a short while. Others spend years of their life shuffling from one place to another and generally having to call the place that they put their hat, home.
I have spoken to many young people in care and am constantly amazed at how many homes they have had to live in. I met one who had asked to be moved to a children’s home simply so that he could have some stability in his life. Many had lived in over 40 homes and were only in their early teens.
During this time, if they are lucky, they are in education and attempting to deal with all the pressures that other young people can find hard. They may have to move school if their new home is not close by and generally adapt constantly to living with people that they might not even get on with.
It’s no surprise therefore that young people in care have poor long-term outcomes. Almost two fifths achieve no GCSE’s at all whilst a further fifth obtain less than 5 GCSE’s. At age 19, almost a third of previously looked-after children are not in education, employment or training. (Official stats from The Poverty Site). These figures are shocking.
I believe that there are many people working to change the care system to try to improve those outcomes - it’s a difficult task with many processes involved. However, let’s hope they work something out that helps those young people, who have already been through hugely stressful situations to get them into care in the first place, to have a more stable childhood and a life where they can obtain as much as any other young person starting out in the world.
And meantime, I’m going to stop moaning about my granny hands and spots and think about how lucky I am. And then I'm going to call my local council and see what I can do that might help these young people achieve brighter and better futures.
Suzannah Wallace
AlterEgo
Inspiring and Motivating Young People
www.alteregocoaching.co.uk
Friday, 17 April 2009
Big Up Mr Binney!
A Mr Giles Binney from Rake in Hampshire, yesterday wrote a letter to The Times that read:
Sir, While not decrying the theme of Dee Spencer’s letter (April 14), may I add a balancing account to the perception of a broken society.
We, a far from sprightly couple, have just returned from a long rail journey, involving changes, stairs and heavy luggage. Again and again young people went out of their way to help us with what would otherwise have been a very difficult journey, and invariably with courtesy, kindness and grace. It was an illuminating experience.
Well, how lovely is that? Not simply that the young people helped them out, but because Mr Binney bothered to write to The Times and extol the kindness of these young people. Young people get a bad press but just as with any generalisation, not all young people are bad. The majority of young people are bright, talented and a pleasure to be around. If we reported the good things young people do as well as the bad, then maybe we wouldn’t find society treating young people with such suspicion and distrust all the time. It does nothing to help them grow up respecting their elders and nothing to help society’s problems right now.
Bring on the Mr Binney’s of this world and let’s hear more ways young people have helped the older generation. After all, there are nearly 200,000 young carers in this country for starters and may they be especially saluted.
SUZANNAH WALLACE
Inspiring and Motivating Young People
www.alteregocoaching.co.uk
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