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Barnardo’s Scotland Welcome Service

Language & Education
Image for Barnardo’s Scotland Welcome Service
Lead Organisation:
Barnardo’s
Theme:
Award Amount:
£20,732.00

Barnardo’s Scotland Welcome service operates nationwide. The service was initially established in response to the war in Ukraine, however we provide support and a warm welcome to all New Scots.

We work with children, young people, and families using a hybrid support model of both in-person and digital support.

We also deliver a range of group work opportunities across Scotland to help support and improve the mental health, wellbeing, and social inclusion of New Scots.

The Supporting New Scots ESOL funding has allowed us to further meet the needs of the Ukrainian community across Scotland and those of children, young people, and families already in our care.

New Scots reached
166

Key Information

Building on Barnardo’s experience of supporting Ukrainian refugees and good practice guidance by Scottish Refugee Council, our language activities and interventions focussed on:

  • Making social connections –  opportunities for participants to develop their language skills in social situations that also improved their integration in their local communities
  • Improved and enhanced employability skills – building CV’s; completing application forms and preparing for interviews.
  • Supporting participants’ children – developing language skills to support children and young people to integrate into nursery/school provision and complete homework tasks

Key Information

Partnership

Barnardo’s Scotland Welcome Service

Geographical reach

Ayrshire, Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Edinburgh.

Dates

May 2023 – Nov 2023

Target Groups

Children, Young People and Parents displaced from their home country.

Project Type

Increasing confidence, promote independence, social inclusion and overall Mental Health & Wellbeing by increasing language proficiency.

Situation

Many families displaced from their home found it challenging to find ESOL to meet the whole families needs.

Digital and In Person Delivery

In order for our ESOL delivery to have the biggest reach and for the Ukrainian community across Scotland to benefit, it was essential that we offered both digital and in-person sessions. This meant no one was disadvantaged due to their living location, especially those in more rural areas.

It was anticipated that our service would primarily offer digital ESOL with additional face-to-face support available from our bases in Glasgow/West of Scotland and the North of Scotland.

Whole Family Approach

More often than not, ESOL provision is targeted towards adults as it is presumed emersion in schools is enough for children and young people. The Ukrainian community were telling us differently however, and many parents were seeking ESOL support for all family members.

Listening to the community and offering a whole family approach was essential if we were to meet their needs.

Commitment

Barnardo’s Scotland Welcome Service committed to support approximately 150 participants through a minimum of 48 digital sessions and approximately 20 face to face sessions.

Involvement of New Scots in project

More often than not, ESOL provision is targeted towards adults as it is presumed emersion in schools is enough for children and young people.

The Ukrainian community were telling us differently however, and many parents were seeking ESOL support for all family members.

Listening to the community and offering a whole family approach was essential if we were to meet their needs.

Impact

The aim of our delivery was not only to increase language proficiency and frequency of interactions in English, but we knew the benefits would be multifaceted and this is clear from the evidence provided.

In addition to the increase in confidence, and frequency of interactions, there have been huge social and mental health benefits for the participants of our ESOL provision.

The idea of a music showcase came about very organically because the children, young people and parents who were engaged with SoundLab wanted the opportunity to showcase the new skills they were acquiring.
Although this was no easy task to coordinate, our Project Workers along with SoundLab staff, worked tirelessly to make it happen.

Challenges encountered

Changes to In Person-Delivery Locations

Unfortunately due to unforeseen staffing changes, we were unable to deliver face to face opportunities in the North of Scotland as originally proposed. We did however ensure that our digital support was advertised through our workers and partners in the North to allow the community to access our digital ESOL provision and ensure they were not at a disadvantage.

Additionally, to counteract these staffing changes and ensure we could deliver our commitment, we were able to offer in person ESOL provision in both Edinburgh and Wishaw as well as Glasgow.

Recruitment

To enhance the ESOL provision, Barnardo’s Scotland Welcome Service, felt it important to hire CELTA qualified As & When workers who were Ukrainian or had lived experience of being displaced. In order to uphold Barnardo’s recruitment and safety protocols, for some, check took longer than anticipated and this meant mandatory training was delayed.

This however allowed the projects to be staggered and managed more effectively as we were able to reflect on challenges/successes of each one and learn from them before offering new provision.

Venues

Finding suitable venues to host some of our ESOL provision was much more challenging and time consuming than originally thought and this unfortunately delayed some of the planned provision.

Solutions

To counter act the unforeseen staffing changes we ensured that our digital support was advertised through our workers and partners in the North to allow the community to access our digital ESOL provision and ensure they were not at a disadvantage.

Additionally, to counteract these staffing changes and ensure we could deliver our commitment, we were able to offer in person ESOL provision in both Edinburgh and Wishaw as well as Glasgow.

Finding suitable venues to host some of our ESOL provision was much more challenging and time consuming than originally thought and this unfortunately delayed some of the planned provision.

The positive aspects of taking on a new approach (innovative)/How the project has expanded on existing examples of good practice (good practice)

Barnardo’s Scotland Welcome Service as well as the Ukrainian community have been able to benefit from this Supporting New Scots ESOL funding. The third sector is a new concept for a lot of Ukrainian families and therefore trust can take time to build.

As people have become familiar with Barnardo’s (who we are and what we offer),we have been able to listen to the needs of the community and utilise these relationships to provide and offer a wide range of ESOL opportunities. These relationships have helped the success of each project.

Breadth of Delivery

As a service we were able to offer a wide range of ESOL opportunities to babies through to adults and on many occasions, whole family learning was encouraged and supported.

Exceeded our expected participant numbers

Whilst our digital delivery fell slightly short of our proposed figure, we were still able to exceed our participant numbers. To be able to reach 166 participants across Scotland in a 7 month period has been a huge undertaking, but with careful coordination and a dedicated team of ESOL teachers, this has been possible.

We delivered more face to face ESOL than planned, and despite our delivery locations changing, we more than trebled our number of in-person ESOL sessions.

Partnership Working

In order to enhance delivery, we have been able to establish some very positive partnerships which will continue beyond this funding, namely the commitment of SoundLab, Paisley YMCA and Hibernian Community Foundation.

Reflections

Although planning and coordinating the delivery of our ESOL provision was difficult to manage at times, due to the challenges named above, the feedback and enthusiasm of the participants demonstrate how worthwhile the funding and our efforts were to the Ukrainian community across Scotland.

Being able to offer parents, children and young people across Scotland ESOL opportunities has been extremely beneficial and rewarding. The power of language can often be underestimated.

Supporting individuals to communicate more freely has been extremely important and plays a vital role in reducing the impact of trauma from being displaced.

Beyond this funding period, Barnardo’s Scotland Welcome Service will continue to utilise our CELTA trained ESOL staff and our learning to date in order to deliver further ESOL opportunities to New Scots across Scotland.

We will continue to tailor our provision to the needs of the community and therefore our support may look different within different areas. Additionally, it is vital we continue to listen to those we are supporting to drive and shape our delivery.

Further Information

Keywords

Barnardo’s, Children, ESOL, Ukraine, Welcoming, Young People

Contact

Contact:
Jill Stephen

Email:
scotlandwelcome@barnardos.org.uk

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