NewsletterEdition 10 (September 2019)

Our Mission:To empower and enable boys age 11-15 with absent fathers or limited access to a male role model, to be motivated, responsible, capable, resilient and emotionally competent to prevent them from becoming at risk of under achieving, off ending, exclusion or dropping out of school.

What we do:• Help boys through male-led group mentoring, to cope with problems

and issues faced at home and school, and explore the important choices they face in their adolescent development, to prevent escalation of negative behaviour.

• Provide boys the opportunities for adventure and to be tested and challenged, both physically and mentally.

• Provide on-going support, lifeskill training and volunteering opportunities.• Raise awareness and understanding of the important role fathers play in

the emotional, mental & educational development and well-being of boys.

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Welcome to another bumper edition of our Lads Need Dads newsletter, incorporating our Spring and Summer activities. We have been very busy and have a lot to update you with, so please take fi ve minutes time out and enjoy catching up with our news!

- Sonia Shaljean - Managing Director.

Highwoods Cohort – Engage programme The Highwoods Colchester cohort enjoyed a weekend of outdoor activities at Birch hall Adventures at the end of April. They took part in team building activities and overcame personal fears, everyone taking part in the high ropes, wall climbing etc. and the mentors even impressed us all with their party tricks! Despite the weather not being conducive to camping, we worked around this and the boys and mentors had a wonderful time.

Meanwhile this cohort have been kept busy over the past few months learning lots of new practical life skills including, the ever popular, ‘Come Dine With Me’ where boys plan and prepare a three course meal for their mums. This time we invited a couple of residents from Enoch House, part of Colchester Borough Homes sheltered housing, to join us as they kindly loaned us the use of their kitchen and dining area.

In addition to learning practical life-skills on Engage, the boys took part in many community volunteering opportunities; including; fence painting, building a compost bin, painting and decorating a military welfare house from top to bottom, to name but a few. A stand-out job was doing a garden clearance for a single mum who has a son with Down syndrome. She hadn’t utilised her garden for many years and it had become so overgrown you literally could get lost in it! It took fi ve mentors and three boys plus some heavy-duty equipment, to totally clear it. A special surprise for her son was a new football goal as mum had mentioned how much her son loved football so we put a call out on social media and within the hour we received a donation to buy a new goal.

High Sheriff Award Winner 2016 & 2017

Tackling the climbing wall.

Mentee hands-on in the kitchen.

Community fence painting.

Mentees on the high ropes.

Come dine with mums.

Football after the garden clearance.

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Clacton County High School (Equip)We returned to our flag-ship school, Clacton County High this year to run another Equip programme. We maintained our 100% completion rate and the boys achieved a 96% attendance rate, which we are proud to report, is pretty standard for our Equip Programmes. All boys have made progress, some significant progress, in every one of the seven areas we work towards. These are; increases in self-esteem, confidence, managing emotions, behaviour, attitude towards school, relationships and motivation.

In June the boys enjoyed a day sailing on the Pioneer, which provided a great opportunity for team work, confidence and resilience building. In July the boys enjoyed a fabulous day of fishing. We look forward to a weekend of camping and outdoor activities in September as they move onto the Engage Programme.

The Pioneer. All hands on deck!

Inspire – Tendring Technology College

Our Inspire Programme, which provides boys the opportunity to meet and hear from men around the country who have an inspirational story, life experience or career, practice peer mentoring and visit inspirational places of interest, got off to a strong start in May with visiting speaker, Army serviceman Andy Unwin who rowed the North Atlantic as part of a four man team from New York to Cornwall. He is also an ambassador for the medicine ball challenge which involves a 4kg medicine ball being cuffed to the arm for a period of 7 days. It is designed to be a representation of the weight and burden of mental health problems can bring to those soldier and veterans suffering PTSD, raising vital awareness, encouraging people to talk about mental health problems and remove the stigma surrounding it.

The boys enjoyed a trip to Kentwell Hall where they were walked through history in marvellous surroundings and period costume re-enactments and look forward to some exciting trips in the Autumn. The boys also enjoyed visiting the wings and wheels show, the nations largest aviation and motoring show.

Ambassadors Our Ambassador programme is open-ended and for any boy who has completed the 18-month Equip-Engage-Inspire Programme. The boys enjoyed a boxing workshop ran by our very own mentor Jonah Jones. We also waved goodbye via an evening of bowling and Golden Arches, to two of our original pilot members who have been with us over three years, Daniel and Jordan. Daniel is moving away to live with his Father and Jordan is moving out of the area and gains a stepfather. We will miss them as they were a big part of Lnd.

Andy Unwin inspire speaker.

Inspire peer mentoring.Inspire session.

Wings and wheels.Kentwell Hall.

Boxing workshop.

Fishing Day.

“I think that the experience that Lads Need Dads gives

the boys is amazing. X is able to express his self and

knows he is in a very safe environment that he can talk

about his true feelings”- Mother

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Awareness raisingIt’s been a busy period for our founder Sonia Shaljean, who takes up every suitable opportunity to raise awareness about the important work of Lads Need Dads. At the end of April she gave a presentation at Anglia Ruskin University where she was invited to speak at the first Essex Social Enterprise Network which was a great opportunity to network with other managers of social Enterprises and share about the issues faced by boys with absent fathers and how we can support them.

Sonia was invited to speak on Actual Radio Colchester on the first week of June. This also coincided with National volunteers’ week and LND’s 4th Birthday. A great opportunity to plug our work, invite applications for our new equip Programme starting in September and recruit new volunteers.

June continued to be busy as Sonia was invited to attend a presentation of the release of the State of the World’s Fathers Report 2019 held in the Houses of Parliament which released a global report on men’s involvement in parenting and care work. It was an interesting debate and one which Sonia felt didn’t really consider the absent father, only present fathers. However, she is to get an opportunity to speak about Lnd as in September she has been invited to give evidence on a panel representing men and boy’s mental health as part of a government enquiry headed by the Women’s Equality Unit at the House of Commons. Sonia is very much looking forward to sharing the impact Lads Need Dads work is having on the mental health of its young men and flag up the importance of early intervention in preventing mental health issues.

Also, in June the Evening standard approached Lnd. They initially spoke to the Shackleton Foundation looking for innovative leaders who are creating social change and it was recommended they interview Lnd as Sonia is one of their Shackleton leaders http://shackletonfoundation.org/?page_id=1983 The article which can be found on this link: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/lads-need-dads-acclaimed-male-mentoring-service-for-boys-without-fathers-aims-to-roll-out-in-every-a4172206.html led to lots of new contacts and interest from across the country and beyond as far as Kenya. This has also led to us pushing forward with plans to trial our programme in a different part of the country, (pending funding – more on this later).

Spurgeons Children’s Charity approached Lads Need Dads asking if we would contribute a blog towards their series: ‘Fathers to the fatherless’. We were happy to oblige and the blog can be found here: https://www.spurgeons.org/lads-need-dads-helping-boys-with-absent-fathers-be-the-best-that-they-can-be/

Happy birthday to us!

Speaking at Essex Social Enterprise Network.

Evening Standard article.

Awards We are grateful to Essex Community Foundation who organised the Essex Funds Awards at Chelmsford City Racecourse in April, which Lads Need Dads received funding towards an Inspire Programme for our Tendring Technology School cohort.

Team LND and the High Sherrif of Essex.

It was a great surprise and honour for our MD, Sonia Shaljean, to find this certificate on her desk upon her return from holiday. She was thrilled to be nominated as one of Essex’s Community Safery Hero’s.

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Lads Need Dads C.I.C Room 4, Imperial House,

20-22 Rosemary Road, Clacton-On-Sea, Essex CO15 1NZ.

Tel: 01255 764603 / 07553 618033 Email: info@ladsneeddads.org

www.ladsneeddads.org

Company No. 9626924

Funding It is proving a challenging year to secure local funding, particularly as we want to extend our services locally. However, all is not lost as we received three unexpected private donations earlier this year, which have enabled us to continue with our programme delivery short- term and deliver a further evening Equip programme in Colchester this Autumn. However, we are mindful that we now need to secure more extensive funding to sustain the future of Lnd so have put in bids to larger bodies, so we can increase our staff team, continue to deliver locally and move forward with our plans to scale up.

Development Lads need Dads are keen to expand awareness to parents of boys from absent father homes as we realise that even if we had a programme in every school in Britain (which is our long-term goal), not everyone would be able to access it. So, our plan over the coming months is to develop some workshops suitable for both agencies and parents. We are keen to show what options and protective factors can be put in place for boys who grow up without a male role model as early as possible, to reduce the need to be referred to Lads Need Dads! Funding is urgently required to pay for a Programme Coordinator to replace our founder who needs to be freed up to work on development and scaling.

New Team members! In August when most people were on holiday, Lads Need Dads were busy delivering training to a new set of volunteers from our community. We welcome on board the following team members:Dale Eaton, Paul Furlong, Chris Harte, Mike Hulse, Chris Morgan and Matt Swain.

Volunteer Fundraiser We are in need of volunteers with experience in sourcing and securing funding and volunteers with a passion for event fundraising. For more information please email: info@ladsneeddads.org. These posts can be flexible and home-based if necessary.

We were thrilled to attend the Tendring Youth awards in July and be nominated for the category of Community improvement for our Engage community volunteering programme whereby we carry out jobs in the community for local residents in need, for free. Even more thrilled to be announced the winner!

We are proud to have received our Bronze Award with the Armed Forces Covenant Employer Recognition Scheme over the summer. We employ a former serviceman who is also a reservist and work in partnership with MCTC (Military Corrective Training Centre) based in Colchester. Additionally we have six of MCTC’s current servicemen trained as mentors on our programmes and are grateful to the support MCTC have shown Lads Need Dads in accommodating us with their training and mess facilities.

Tendring youth awards.