This will be my final year as Chair of CYCA, having held the position for 13 years. I am delighted to accept the position of Honorary President so will still be able to remain part of the Charity, but with less responsibility! I offer my best wishes to Jan Williams who takes on the role from November, and thank her, Allan Williams, Steve Mears and Catherine Thomas in their roles to support staffing and other issues. Thanks also to Trustees Byron Jenkins and John Jenkins for their support in hosting functions and fundraising for CYCA. The Charity continues to work with the most vulnerable families in Carmarthenshire, and our new project, Securing Futures ensures we help those families most in need of emotional support. We are also very proud to have been awarded £5,000 from the Police Commissioner Fund to explore new ground with Dads in Prison. Little Seraphs now becomes a Flying Start nursery which will deliver an excellent service as does all our other settings. My heartfelt thanks go to all CYCA staff who work tirelessly to ensure children, young people and families receive the best possible care at all times. I also thank Llanelli Town and Rural Councils and the County Council who continue to support the Charity. Their core funds help us to survive. This year, we also bid farewell to Barry Johnson, who has been Deputy Manager for CYCA for a number of years. On behalf of the Trustees, I would like to thank Barry for his contribution, as he has played and integral part in CYCA’s success over the years and will be sorely missed by us all. And finally, I am delighted that our Chief Executive Officer, Tracy Pike achieved the Community Champion Award from our local press. I have been Chair with Tracy since her appointment and have been able to support her and witness CYCA grow from a very small Charity to now one of the biggest in the County. I wish Tracy, all the project managers and staff and Jan Williams as my successor, my very best wishes. CYCA Chairperson
www.cycaonline.org
2013 has been yet again, a very successful year for CYCA. Continuing on from our success at becoming Charity of The Year in 2012, I was nominated by Sam Andrews in the category of Community Champion in the Llanelli Star Awards. This award could not be achieved without the dedicated staff that support me in my work at CYCA every day. Much of this work has been accomplished with the support from my Deputy Manager Barry Johnson, who will be sadly missed as he returned to London to look after his family. CYCA wish him every success and good luck. We have been awarded £5,000 from the Dyfed Powys Police Commissioner Fund. Our new ‘Breaking Cycles’ project, will provide support for fathers whilst in prison and on release, helping them build relationships with their children as well as mentoring for the children themselves. The Llanelli Music and Jazz Committee also nominated CYCA as their chosen charity this year, and much needed funds were raised at their Jazz Festival in August. CYCA celebrated our BIG Lottery funded flagship project ‘Securing Futures’ at a very successful launch in June. Over 30 partners attended the event, where we also launched our RDP funded ‘Interactive Support Gateway’. This will now be developed in its second year to provide counselling online. . Our early years services, after school clubs and holiday clubs continue to provide exceptional services for thousands of children every year, providing a safe environment for children to play and learn. We are delighted that Little Seraphs will become our third Flying Start Nursery, meaning we provide early years services to over 90 children every day. ‘Families in Crisis’ funding ended in May 2013 with over 400 families having received counselling or therapeutic support. We have applied for further funding, and if successful, the service will be extended for another three years. As CYCA continues to evolve and grow, the role of the Trustees Board has never been so crucial. I offer my sincere thanks to all Board members for their ongoing support and advice. As Pam Edmunds ends her 13th year as Chair of trustees, we are delighted that she will now become CYCA Honorary President and thus a life long board member! As funding becomes more difficult to access for day to day operating costs at CYCA, local support has never been so crucial, and I am very grateful to both Town and Rural councils as well as Carmarthenshire County Council for their contributions to our core funding. Diolch Yn Fawr iawn
CYCA Chief Executive Officer
Over the course of this year, we at CYCA, continued to support children, young people and families across Carmarthenshire through a range of our high quality services and projects. From nurseries and play clubs to mentoring young people and therapeutic support for families, we have once again continued our ethos of “nurturing and supporting the community from birth to adulthood!” We continuously strive to offer exciting and innovative services, which reach out to families who are most in need, whether they are easy to access or hard to reach and isolated. An example of this came to fruition during this year, as we launched our exciting new ’Interactive Support Gateway’, which enables children, young people, adults and families to access online information and support via digital tools and media. This innovative service supplements our traditional ’face to face’ work, and means we are accessible to everyone across the County, no matter where they are and what time of day or night they are in need of our support. Every service and project is delivered by a dedicated, experienced and highly skilled team who contribute enormously to our success. With a variety of skills and experience in the fields of emotional health & wellbeing, family and play therapy, counselling, play, childcare, youth work and mentoring, our face to face staff have once again delivered a high quality, professional service. The staff are led by a management team with over 35 years experience, which ensures that during the course of this year the ‘CYCA experience’ has continued to be one of nurturing, caring, supporting, and in many cases, life changing for children and their families across Carmarthenshire. With more ground breaking projects in the pipeline, 2014 promises to be another exciting and successful year at CYCA.
www.cycaonline.org
It has once again been very busy and exciting year in our three nursery settings - Jellitoz, Little Seraphs and Teddybears, each continuing to run at full capacity, providing local children with stimulating and fun care and education in preparation for primary school. It was a particularly special year for the newest of our nurseries, Little Seraphs, as they were successful in achieving a tender for the ‘Flying Start’ initiative, which means that they, along with Teddybears and Jellitotz can now offer free childcare for families within the local area. Teddybears too had some special news, as they secured a grant from the CAVS Community Development Fund to improve their outdoor area. All three nurseries celebrated a host of special dates and occasions such as St David’s Day, Easter, World Book Day, Halloween and of course Christmas by dressing up in special costumes and staging magical shows for their families. This year, all three also made the most of our weather by making snowmen in the winter and taking part in numerous outdoor activities and special ‘days out’ during the hot summer, such as trips to Folly Farm and the beach, spray and play sessions with water and having fun growing vegetables and flowers. Sports days were particularly enjoyable this year as families turned out in huge numbers to cheer their children in the sunshine. Throughout the year, each nursery was visited by some special guests including ‘Zoolab’ where children and staff had the chance to handle snakes, spiders and rats! Each setting adopted their own specials themes over the year. At Jellitotz, children had the chance to explore’ light and shadows’ where they had lots of fun exploring with torches. Little Seraphs adopted a “Me and my family” theme learning about themselves, their families, and where they live. Children had the chance to create their very own family trees and took part in a photo shoot visit with their families. Teddybears children learned about the theme “Ourselves and the people who help us” where they had a special visit from the fire brigade!
Once again, we have enjoyed another year full of success at our after school and holiday clubs. During each school break, the holiday clubs at our Dewi Sant Play Centre were in great demand and they featured a range of activities including arts & crafts, circle time, cooking, computers, den building, dance and singing sessions, table top games, group activities, sports days and fun water splash days! Throughout the Summer, children were treated to some new activities, which included African arts, circus skills, dance, puppetry and parkour (‘free running’). Over the course of the year, our after school clubs in Bryn, Furnace, Maes Y Morfa and Dewi Sant enjoyed high attendance levels with continual support and high demand from service users. Also due to high demand, our Furnace Club opened for extended sessions and continues to go from strength to strength. Our after school and holiday clubs are available for children aged 3-11 years old throughout Carmarthenshire allowing children to thrive and develop in a fun, friendly, safe and stimulating environment.
www.cycaonline.org
Mentoring has been an integral part of our work yet again in 2013. As well as being a major focus for our main projects, Families in Crisis and Securing Futures, through our highly skilled and trained mentors, we have been once again held weekly Mentoring Clubs at our Palms Centre. The sessions offer a safe, stimulating environment where the young people can get together, share experiences and have fun! Through activities such as healthy cooking, music, aromatherapy, arts and crafts and massage, the young people are nurtured and developed in a manner which helps them build self-confidence, self-esteem, motivation, and self-worth. At the beginning of the year, the club had a special visit from the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, Mr Keith Towler, who listened to the young people’s views and eagerly took part in activities such as playing the Guitar and received a head massage from the holistic therapist. The young people who attended this year benefited immensely and the results shown in their individual schools in terms of behaviour, attendance and grades has been fantastic. We also ran a specialist Cooking Mentoring Club for primary school aged children who are involved in our services and projects. Once a week, the children had the opportunity to cook fun, healthy dishes, which they tucked into during the session and also took home to share with their families. We have also continued to run our highly successful ‘Angling Participation’ project, where children and young people who have suffered distress in their lives or those who demonstrate challenging behaviour are ‘mentored’ through the art of fly fishing. The participants once again received national and international success, and were coached and mentored by a mixture of our experience coaches as well as our new ‘peer’ mentors who have themselves been participants of the initiative for a number of years.
This was the third and final year of the Big Lottery Funded project ‘Families in Crisis’ (FIC). Throughout the course of the year a further 62 families were offered support by the project team, meaning that overall, the project has supported over 428 individuals and families from the local community. FIC has also worked alongside 48 organisations from all areas of the community. The ability of this project to be both insightful and responsive to individual and family needs resulted in each family receiving a tailor made service, which identified their areas of difficulty and strength. A small co-ordinated team of Mentors, Therapists (Family Therapist, Child Therapist and Adult Counsellors) an After School Club and a Mentor Mums Group meant that each family was able to access support that was most appropriate to them. The Mentor Mums Group was offered within a local primary school, working jointly with school staff and local Mums. Its aim was to offer a support network to parents that empowered and guided them, looking at issues that focussed on parenting but also on child development, the impact of trauma, and the difficulties in simply being a ‘good enough’ parent. As well as offering arts and crafts, a swishing event and a much deserved cuppa, whilst the group was initially facilitated by the FIC Team, a true sign of the empowerment was the development of the group being managed by the Mums themselves. This group will continue on, despite the formal ending of FIC in May 2013. Over the course of the three years, FIC had exceeded all projected targets and had become a vital community based service for families in distress and crisis. Children’s Services remained the primary referring agent for the duration of the project and since the end of the project we have received further contact and willingness to now commission and pay for FIC services. Whilst the end of any team is sad, this was tempered by the awareness of the positive impact and feedback we have received from our families, for example: “Thank you for all that you have done for our family, you have all been so wonderful and we are so so grateful for all your help.” FIC Family 63 “Things have really improved and whilst they aren’t perfect, I am a lot more hopeful – thank you.” FIC Family 42 “We’ve been able to look at what we need to do, we can see things more clearly and things are getting better.” FIC Family 62 www.cycaonline.org www.cycaonline.org
The Securing Futures project has recently completed its first year and has successfully supported 68 families, which means that 77 children in the Carmarthenshire area, living with parents who have low level mental health and/or learning disability have already benefitted from the service. The project offers an early intervention service to children and support for their parents/carers. The support focuses on emotional health, cognitive and social skills, and learning support needs. These are addressed through a holistic range of interventions including mentoring, family support, play therapy and family therapy. Mentoring is proving to be a highly effective approach, as the child is seen as an individual in their own right. The mentor provides a child with age-appropriate choices to develop competence that leads to independence and increases confidence and selfesteem. Additionally, providing a safe space, in midst of chaotic family dynamics. The mentoring role also supports joint parent/child activity. For example, sharing and enjoying mutual activities. By intervening early and helping families access support and services, ‘Securing Futures’ reduces the likelihood of children being at risk of harm in the short term and aims to prevent future difficulties with mental health and parenting in the long term. The project continues to develop links with established agencies and is working closely with TAF, Sure Start, Home Start, Health Visitors and schools to name but a few. The official launch took place in June and was well attended by professionals of partner agencies and representatives from the Big Lottery and Carmarthenshire County Council as well as the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, Mr Keith Towler, and Dr Mike Shooter CBE. The launch event provided a great opportunity to raise the profile of the prestigious project and also acknowledge the work of all of CYCA’s services. The Securing Futures team are now looking forward to building on the success of the first
During the course of this year, we were able to showcase our commitment to developing an innovative service to our families, as we developed our new ‘Interactive Support Gateway’. Funded by both the RDP Innovative Communities Project and the BIG Lottery Fund, the ground breaking project was developed over two phases. Firstly, in-depth research was carried out with potential ‘user groups’ across the County, the results of which determined the content and ‘make up’ of the second phase, which was to produce the ‘gateway’ itself. The aim of the online tool is to supplement our ‘face to face’ work and enables us to offer a more flexible support package and reach out to individuals and families, who are isolated and hard to reach, and to those who may need support and information ‘out of hours’. The ‘gateway’ is divided into to four main areas: 8-11 years old, 12-16 years old, Adults and Families and its content is a mixture of general support information and a range of digital tools, all of which have a ‘localised’ theme and approach by targeting directly the people of Carmarthenshire as well as signposting to local specialised agencies. Thus providing a ‘one-stop-shop’ for emotional and well being support for the people of the County. As well as the general support information and tools, there is also a secure ‘log-in’ area to the ‘gateway’, where people can access direct support from a trained therapist or counsellor via video or chat. To access the gateway visit www.cycaisg.com
www.cycaonline.org
Throughout the year, we were able to utilise the expertise from staff such as Sam Andrews and our CEO Tracy Pike, to develop training that has been identified through our current work and has supported and ‘up-skilled’ both professionals within the Children’s Services sector as well as parents themselves. We have also began some twilight sessions in schools for staff. This year our training programmes have been developed around the following themes:
Secure attachments –developing a sense of self in adult hood Mentor Mums (written for Maes y Morfa School) Dealing with childhood trauma Working with absent Dads in Prison Developing self resiliency Becoming an effective mentor Developing EQ (Emotional Intelligence) Cyber Bullying and online Child Exploitation - how to protect children. Building teams
CYCA staff have benefited from training from external consultants such as Martin Davies and Jude Sellen. Their broad expertise, knowledge and advice has enabled and empowered staff to learn and utilise new skills with parents and children. We hope to offer them an annual slot at our Palms Centre in Llanelli. For further information please contact Tracy Pike on 01554 757599 or email tracy@cycaonline.org
Carmarthenshire Youth & Children’s Association, Dewi Sant Centre, Nevill Street, Llanelli, SA15 2RS Tel: 01554 757599 support@cycaonline.org Registered Charity No 512720 Designed By Matthew Newbold