Our exercise modules are developed and delivered by experienced trainers who work supporting young women and girls affected by criminal exploitation and violence, helping you build your skills in supporting them.
These modules introduce delegates to an exercise that our practitioners use in their work with
young women and girls.
All these modules include:
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Introduction to the exercise and its purpose
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Pre-recorded demonstration of the exercise by Abianda practitioners, with follow-up Q&A
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Delegates practising the exercise in small groups, with follow-up reflections and Q&A
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Abianda service users' perspective on the relevance of these issues, and what works about this Abianda exercise and approach
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Concluding Q&A
Please note - all attendees must have completed our Introductory Module - Working with Young Women and Girls Affected by 'Gangs' and County Lines - before taking part in one of these sessions.
Anger is often something young women wish to address in their Best Hopes for their work with Abianda. Our Anger Volcano exercise helps young women to understand the valid reasons for their anger and increases their emotional vocabulary and intelligence. In this module, we demonstrate the exercise itself. We also explore key follow-up conversations around coping strategies and encouraging young women's critical consciousness
Anger
This exercise develops young women's critical consciousness around their own relationships and gives them space to think about how they would like their relationships to be. We share Abianda's approach to safety, information sharing, and grounding when conducting what could be very challenging conversations around relationships.
Relationship Mapping
We conduct this contextual safety planning with young women to minimise risk and build on the strategies they are already using to keep safe. The exercise helps young women feel more skilled, confident and independent, and may support her move towards her Best Hopes.
Contextual Safety Planning
Our approach to information sharing is rooted in our youth work principles. We have a trauma-informed approach to information sharing and respect young women's empirical knowledge of their own lives. We recognise that young women are best placed to identify issues and solutions, and we tip the balance of power in favour of young women. This module explains what this means in practice, in relation to referral forms and evaluation reports, professional meetings, and how to talk about confidentiality and safeguarding with the young women who use our services.
Information Sharing
exercises
reflective
practices
Our reflective practice modules draw on Abianda practitioners’ experiences of working with young women and girls affected by violence and exploitation. Each module focuses on a specific area of practice that often arise in our support and advocacy work.
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Practitioners explain the challenges that they encountered in their practice, and how they overcame them.
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Delegates will come away with practical tips to use in their own practice.
Please note - all attendees must have completed our Introductory Module - Working with Young Women and Girls Affected by 'Gangs' and County Lines - before taking part in one of these sessions.
We explore the language that may be used in relation to young women and girls affected by gangs and county lines - "streetwise", "hard to engage", "difficult" etc. We share young women's reflections on how this kind of language influences their experience of working with professionals. We explore how language creates power in the context of attendees' organisations, and how we can influence culture and society through our use of language.
The Power of Language
This session covers our approach to advocacy, and our work to ensure young women's needs are met. We explore the ways we work alongside young women to equip them with skills and confidence to advocate for themselves, and thereby take control and influence the decisions that affect their lives. Professionals will hear how Abianda supports young women to prepare for professionals meetings, and what we do when a young woman is not ready to participate in the advocacy process.
Advocating for and with Young Women
This session supports professionals to recognise compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma and burnout and explores practical strategies to support yourself. We also consider organisation-wide trauma-informed approaches to support staff, and how solution-focused practice can support this work
Resilience and Self-Care
This session has been created by young women with experience of secure, who want to share their experiences to help others. We examine the research around secure accommodation and consider it through a contextual safeguarding lens. Attendees will hear feedback from our service users about how they wanted to be supported through a period of secure, and an effective transition out of it.
Supporting Young Women in Secure Accomodation
This module examines the alignment of the principles of contextual safeguarding and Abianda's own model of practice. We explore the ways we have embedded a Tier 1 contextual safeguarding approach within our work with young women and girls affected by gangs and county lines, and our progress towards taking a Tier 2 approach. Professionals are supported to consider how they could embed contextual safeguarding within their own work and organisations. Abianda is part of the VS collective, working with the University of Bedfordshire's Contextual Safeguarding programme. This is a space for developing contextual safeguarding approaches and peer learning, in the voluntary sector
Reflections on Taking a Contextual Safeguarding Approach