Kibble's Journey

Express Yourself

Kibble's Gannochy Trust Centre for Expressive Arts first opened its doors in 2010 and since then it's been a hub of creativity, nurturing the talents of young people as they develop confidence and self-esteem. It's the ideal venue to showcase talent to teachers, family and friends and 2014 was a bumper year. A few of the highlights included:

• The Gannochy Festival - an annual music event featuring the Kibble Band amongst others
• Burns celebration event
• DJ presentation
• The Singing Group performed for local care home residents
• Screening of a film funded by Creative Scotland and directed by Peter Mackie Burns
• Kibble Allsorts Variety Show for Renfrewshire Mental Health Arts and Film Festival
• Peter Pan and the Return of Captain Hook show
• The Big Freeze panto
• Behind the Noise - weekly sound engineering courses
• Health promotion events such as yoga and street dance
• Dirty Feet Dance Company use the hall weekly for rehearsals

Supporting Role

South unit look after a wide range of young people, many of whom exhibit challenging behaviour and have a common need for stability in their lives. Working with families has always played an important role, and in 2014 the focus was on proactively promoting family work, providing help in addition to the services delivered by the Specialist Intervention Services team. Staff offered parents and grandparents support with their own needs, and assisted on family trips away.

Young people were also actively encouraged to contribute to the local community. Achievements have included one young person securing a Saturday job, and participation in a charity event to raise money for the emergency services.

This work has been a resounding success and will continue in 2015.

Brighter Futures

KibbleWorks, our collective of youth training and employment enterprises, turned ten in 2014. This was a big year for KibbleWorks and in September it became an approved City and Guilds Centre. It has subsequently been granted approval to offer courses in Vehicle Systems Maintenance, Horticulture, Warehousing and Personal Progress. Offering these vocational and industry recognised courses has strengthened the benefits to the young people, giving them the best chance of a successful transition to a meaningful career. In addition to formal qualifications, KibbleWorks also provides short courses relevant to a range of work-related areas. The bike maintenance programme started in 2014, and is an excellent example of our initiatives working together.

We believe our efforts to integrate the learning and employment elements of KibbleWorks ensure our work is fully cognisant of many of the recommendations of the Wood Commission Report, (Education Working for All!), and we will endeavour to benchmark our activities against the full range of recommendations as we continue to develop.

Happy Birthday - You're Ten!

Kibble reached a milestone in 2014 as its Intensive Fostering Services (IFS) enjoyed its tenth birthday. Many young people who have been looked after by IFS sent cards with messages such as: "Thank you IFS for helping me through my highs and lows and offering me a great amount of support. I couldn't ask for a better family and they can't do enough for me."

With 36 young people being fostered in this time, the service celebrated a decade of welcoming young people and carers through its doors and thanked the staff, young people and carers for being part of the IFS community.

Going for Gold

Kibble was presented with the prestigious Investors in People Gold Accreditation award. The awards are designed to recognise companies and organisations that encourage and train their staff to improve both themselves and the performance of the organisation they work for.

Chief Executive Graham Bell reaffirmed the organisation's commitment to the personal development of staff: "Training is a top priority at Kibble as we aim to provide the best possible service to the young people we teach and who are in our care."

This was the second award of 2014 following hot on the heels of the EFQM award.

Specialist Intervention Services

Our Specialist Intervention Services (SIS) team have further added to the range of trauma treatments offered, introducing Treating Problem Behaviour (TPB) trauma therapy (R.Greenwald), with the support of the Scottish Government. Measuring self-reported trauma symptoms of young people in secure care showed an average decrease of 30% between initial accommodation and six weeks later. We are also the only residential childcare service to offer Dialectical Behaviour Therapy as a method of support to young people.

When asked to rate the usefulness of the SIS team's work, social workers gave an average rating of 9.2 out of 10. Feedback from young people working with SIS has also been positive:

• 100% felt respected in sessions
• 96% felt listened to by their worker
• 96% felt safe in sessions
• 96% felt that their worker cared about their future
• 82% felt that they had learned new skills