Review of the Year 2016-2017 ©2017 The Change Project Foreword This year has seen unprecedented developments for the Change Project. It has been exciting and exhilarating, as well as challenging and demanding for all of the team. In the year of this review we were still Relate North Essex & East Herts; that changed on 01 June 2017. Having been closely involved with the changes occurring in the Relate Federation over 2016, the Board took the decision to resign our membership of the Federation in January 2017, citing that this was considered to be in the best long term interests of the clients we serve. On 01 June 2017 the charity was renamed and became The Change Portfolio, trading as The Change Project. We continue to deliver the range of services that we are best known for, including domestic violence prevention services, counselling, sex therapy, and training programmes. Our work in the field of domestic violence and abuse continued to grow and evolve. This year saw the successful rollout of domestic violence prevention programmes for perpetrators to Bedford, and Luton, in addition to our established programmes in Hertfordshire and Essex. We continued to receive positive feedback about our delivery of basic and advanced Domestic Violence awareness training to multi-disciplinary professionals. Since 2016 we’ve been running one of three UK pilot areas for The Drive Project, a 3 year venture that challenges perpetrators of domestic abuse. This new model of intervention aims to fundamentally change perpetrator behaviour to make victims and families safe. We are privileged to be part of this ground-breaking pilot and are striving to offer the best practice to inform the evaluation. The Drive Project is an evidence-based pilot; at this stage it is too early to report concrete outcomes. This year has seen our family services in the community continue to thrive. Youth counselling in schools remains a valued service despite seeing a change in management mid-way through the year. As a result of introductory meetings we are now commissioned, in the year ahead, to deliver our Active Listener training programme in one school, and have generated enquiries regarding this training from others. One of the aims of The Change Project is to reach all those clients in need of our help who are unaware we can offer relevant services, or simply don't know we exist. An active social media presence (Twitter, Facebook), combined with a regularly maintained website, Google AdWords account, and YouTube channel (coming soon) will help in tackling this issue. Cathy Grafton Chief Executive 2 Sex Therapy and Counselling Services @ The Relationship Hub The Change Project provides Sex Therapy and Counselling Services designed to help all types of people resolve their relationship issues. Most people prefer to engage in counselling in person, to fill this need we make our services available in multiple venues across Essex. Counselling via video conferencing or telephone is available to facilitate remote Counselling when accessibility is an issue. Most of our face to face 1200 therapy can be delivered in the evenings, as well as Clients daytime, to ensure we can offer the service at a time which fits with the needs of the client. 3000 Our counselling teams are experienced, qualified practitioners who are respectful of all relationships and Sessions have the skills to work with families, family members, individuals, couples, and young people. Chargeable services delivered by The Change Project are priced to take into account the circumstances of the client. We take pride in ensuring that people get the service they need regardless of what they can afford to pay. With the help of sustained fundraising we can continue to provide this universal access to our services. “Jude was an amazing help, we can't thank her enough for helping us through a very difficult time”. Dawn Jenkins Counselling Services Manager 01245 258680 www.thechange-project.org/hub.php 3 Community Services The Change Project works in partnership with schools, delivering counselling services to children, young people and families their local community. This service delivers family counselling, child focussed counselling, youth counselling and family support services. 87 The majority of this collaborative work is carried out across Essex, and is delivered on school premises and/or at the Schools family home. Our family counselling draws on systemic training, enabling 650 families to develop new skills and coping mechanisms that deal with family problems as a whole rather than focussing Children on the child as the problem. Our child focussed counselling is delivered 1 to 1 to children aged between 4 and 11 years. It uses a multitude of techniques such as puzzles, drawing, games and many types of play to help younger children learn to express themselves. Our youth counselling helps young people aged 11 years and over to explore any difficulties they may be experiencing at home, with friends, or at school. It offers young people a safe environment in which to talk confidentially without the fear of being judged. Family support services are not counselling services – their primary aim is to assist families struggling with practical issues. Guidance can be offered on topics ranging from the setting of boundaries with their children, to signposting families who are experiencing financial difficulties. Tania Woodgate Community Services Manager 07545 208340 www.thechange-project.org/community.php 4 Domestic Abuse Prevention Services The Change Project's RESPECT accredited Behaviour Change programme is delivered as a 27 week structured group work programme or an 18 week structured individual programme. 350 Both programmes run in parallel with associated specialist, pro-active, partner and children’s services. The principle aim Referrals of the service is to increase the safety of victims and children by encouraging the abusive partner to change. 160 During 2016/17 we received over 350 referrals into the Families Behaviour Change service, and offered a variety of services and support to over 160 families. “I believe that I can change - if you had asked me a year ago I would have said I had nothing to change about me, I’m fine. I now realise that I am the cause of my marriage breakdown and that my partner was abused by me. I wish I had known about The Change Project sooner, our lives would have been so different. “ We successfully partnered The Dove Project to win the tender to deliver Behaviour Change programmes in Southend-on-Sea for a three year period. The Tender Education Partnership approached us to be a partner in delivering the Tender Education Programme in schools for two years. We have previously worked with Tender when they first piloted their programme outside of London and it is rewarding to be invited to partner them a second time. This programme involves drama based workshops which are delivered in schools and the aim is to educate young people about domestic abuse and the forms it takes. Gina Smith Behaviour Change Administrator 07872 541982 www.thechange-project.org/behaviour.php 5 Training Review The Change Project delivers the Separated Parents Information Programme (SPIPs) to separated parents in dispute who are directed by their local Family Court to attend. SPiPs gives advice and support on how to best help children in this situation and enables parents to move towards their own solutions. We delivered SPiPs to over 900 people last year and have now extended the training to include parents who are not court ordered to attend. 900 We have developed a range of training programmes on working with domestic abuse - including Working with SPIP Clients Perpetrators, Domestic Abuse Awareness (basic and advanced), and Time to Change - a training programme on 74 working with perpetrators with substance misuse issues. These training packages were delivered throughout Essex Sessions and in parts of London during 2016/17 and will be promoted via a dedicated YouTube Channel during the coming year. As we begin our journey as The Change Project, our Relationship Hub counselling services are also contributing to our training portfolio in the coming year. Drawing on our expertise and knowledge about relationship issues we are launching our first counselling based training programme, Counselling Skills for Non Counsellors - which is very useful learning for people from all walks of life and particularly useful for people who manage teams or work directly with their clients. “10/10: The training was informative, interesting, pitch at a comfortable level, and passionately delivered by a knowledgeable trainer.” SPIP Administrator DVA Training Administrator 01245 258680 www.thechange-project.org/training.php 6 I.T. Services Following on from the success of our in-house bespoke database, Pandora, a new project was realised, Pandora V2. The original Pandora was developed to mirror the existing paper based services offered by us in 2013. This year the restrictions on which services we can offer, and how, have been removed. Mirroring this potential for rapid service redevelopment, and new service rollout, Pandora V2 development began. Built from the ground up, this new database was designed to be malleable at a user level. The user can create their own onscreen forms (questions/answers), and associated database objects (responses), insert and link them to existing objects, and design their own statistical reports and prepopulated forms (e.g. mail- merge). Our previous database used a monolithic approach to information sharing between services, as there was little common, organisational-wide paperwork. From the outset, Pandora V2 uses common areas for storing data that can be linked to any number of services – this affords insights into people, case, and asset management, as well as simplifying system-wide reporting for performance and outcome measurement. Diversity People Referrals Cases Services Scheduling Forms Reporting Pandora V2 Pandora Tables Designer System Security Now relaunched as The Change Portfolio, and with our new found flexibility, we need to ensure that all our future IT endeavours maintain the levels of data transparency and security expected by our clients and partners.