Ten years as a Marmot city

Grapevine is a Marmot partner that embeds the Marmot Principles in their work programmes. Their ‘strengthening people’ work strives to ‘enable all children, young people, and adults to maximise their capabilities and have control over their lives’.

Grapevine’s Teenvine youth projects support young people aged 11 to 18 with special educational needs and disabilities, socially isolated, marginalised from ordinary childhood experiences, and facing some of the biggest health inequalities. Teenvine helps young people:

• See themselves as leaders of change in their own lives

• Develop a plan for a future they dream of
• To develop the relationships needed for onward opportunity
• To develop agency, empower their voices, forge new relationships, and inform others about what’s needed to improve systems and services.

Teenvine projects include a mixture of one-to- one support, advocacy, online gaming, group meet-ups, and the power of fun. Because of Teenvine, young people not engaged with education have gained the confidence to go on and study what they always wanted. Families experiencing inequality are supported to use their assets and strengths to overcome barriers, as leaders of their change.

Aisha's story

An example of this is a family, and parent whom we will call Aisha to protect identification.

Aisha and her daughter both have autism and were living in temporary accommodation following a relationship breakdown. Aisha has a variety of physical health conditions she has struggled to get help with over the years. This and caring for her daughter leave her susceptible to periods of mental ill health.

Aisha didn’t want ‘services’ involved in her life, but this was impacting her housing issue. Temporary accommodation was creating stress for them both; mould on the walls, next door's dog barking day and night, afraid of using the gas cooker as they only ever used electric. Her daughter was not sleeping and showing through her behaviour that things must change. Neither were eating properly. Aisha used painting to manage stress but had not lifted a brush for some time. We asked Aisha what mattered most and started there. We helped Aisha join a health project where she used her own health story to get help for herself and to help others. She developed a communication manual, so health professionals understood her needs. Her daughter was supported on Teenvine, so she could have fun and time-space outside the home to develop new skills.

We helped Aisha build a trusting relationship with other Marmot Partners such as Early Help to help with her housing application, and the Law Centre, supported her alongside this. We helped Aisha find places to go in the daytime that are warm, free, and calming, where she could also reconnect with her art. We showed Aisha how to use the cooker shared a meal with her and her daughter and gave them a chance to check in on the foster care of their cat.

Successes

Aisha said “I feel less trapped, we can get through this.”

Aisha feels able to deal with problems better. She has increased agency to share with health what she needs, and as a family, she is closer to others and has relationships with people who can help with system barriers. A new home will hopefully follow soon.

Seeing the person as the leader of change, from their perspective, with assets to bring to the table means you move from helper to enabler. Enablers create resilient people and communities. Over the last 5 years, Grapevine’s Teenvine projects have helped over 215 young people and their families.

• Last year 61 youngsters with SEND benefited from either individual advocacy or group self-advocacy support to build resilience and receive good help for critical moments.
• 83% of the young people felt more confident in speaking up when things don’t feel right and now know how to include their solutions in situations, they find challenging.
• Recently we helped 23 young people with complex SEND, from the city's most deprived wards, step back into learning after years of school absence.
• Over the next 3 years we aim to support another 200 plus SEND youngsters who find themselves marginalised by disadvantage from our education system and missing the opportunities ordinary childhood experiences can bring.

Visit the Grapevine website for more information.