Welsh Women’s Aid, A Day in the Life
Children & Young People Services Development Coordinator.
By Christina Parker
As part of Children Matter, I cover the South Wales Valleys Region, which includes: Rhondda Cynon Taff, Merthyr Tydfil, Powys and Neath Port Talbot.
My main responsibilities are to design, develop and deliver the S.T.A.R suite of services, offer training, build capacity across Wales and support our fantastic children’s workers from our member groups and any other facilitators of the S.T.A.R. Programmes.
I also get to do lots of other things – attend meetings, events and conferences to raise awareness of violence against women and girls, help the Welsh Women’s Aid fundraising, policy and communication teams with various projects or catch up on emails.
This means that when you have the life of a CYP Services Development Coordinator no week, day or even hour is the same!
Every now and again, I’m lucky enough to work a typical 9-5 day… on these days I may make some telephone calls with member groups and partner agencies, meet with my line manager, complete any outstanding paperwork, feed into the weekly member email or plan for future services.
As no day is the same I will give you a taster of what I got up to today. This morning I met with the other Children Matter Coordinators and my line manager to discuss our project plan and priorities. I then spent the rest of the day reviewing a module of the certificate QCF training, to make sure that all definitions, statistics, legislation, policies and procedures are current and up to date.
This evening, I drove to Port Talbot to deliver the S.T.A.R (safety, trust and respect) Young People Programme (11-13) pilot in the Bulldogs Club. The group were fully engaged and after the session we all had a free personal training session in the gym, which was great fun. The young people love the fact that the facilitators get involved and it is a great way to encourage and motivate them, especially when they see us doing sit ups and burpees.
I am very passionate about the work that I do and I love the fact that it is so varied. Children Matter along with Welsh Women’s Aid is full of strong passionate women and it’s an honour to be working alongside each and every one, long may it continue.
Children Matter – ‘Making Wales a safer place for children and young people’.
We work with partner organisations to deliver services to Children and Young People aged 0-25 years across Wales who are affected by domestic abuse.
It aims to support:
• Children and young people in Wales who are affected by domestic abuse to have access to consistent high quality support services;
• Children and Young People to be able to develop healthy relationships in their own lives, preventing abuse in future relationships
The project works with partner organisations in the delivery of services, enabling access to consistent support across Wales and increasing awareness of domestic abuse and its impacts.