Our comhairle signposting practice session.
Recently cork city comhairle na nÓg held a practice signposting session to prepare for delivering the workshop to schools and youth groups. we wanted to ensure that we could deliver the workshop well to achieve our aim of helping young people with their mental health.
The session was run by our senior members. Our junior members participated in it.
The exercises were a walking debate wherein a statement would be made and people who agreed would move to one side and those who disagreed moved to the other side, people would be asked to explain why they held those beliefs and sometimes this would lead to people changing their views, anyone who was unsure moved to the middle. Recently comhairle member Jamie created a map exercise where people would label where various services in cork city (such as
the samaritans and the ymca) were located and would then be told what they got
right and wrong to expand their knowledge. One exercise asked the participants
to outline obstacles to contacting mental health services and solutions to those obstacles. The last exercise involved one of the facilitators asking the participants what they believe should be done in various situations involving mental health, an example situation being a friend approaching you and telling you their mental health was suffering but asking you not to tell their parents or put any services in contact with them.
I personally found the experience to be positive and found that our members were well prepared to deliver the workshop to schools and youth groups across cork. The activities ran smoothly and were very informative.
At the end we asked our members to provide feedback, reviewing feedback wefound it to be positive overall and most people said they enjoyed it, learned newinformation and that they would recommend it to a friend.
Aidan Wolfe