Foster Care Fortnight: Fostering and the Arts

Did you know that it's Foster Care Fortnight (June 1 - June 14)? For the next two weeks, we'll be taking a look at what fostering is and how St Christopher's supports young people and foster carers. 

Today we're focusing on fostering and the arts. Here's Joanna Treharne, supervising social worker, from our West Midlands fostering team, talking about the drama group she runs for local fostered children.

The Sparkling Stars drama group started in September 2014 as an opportunity for fostered young people and birth children to come together and explore expressing themselves through the medium of drama and performing arts. It's evolved into a regular monthly group. The initial target group was 11 to 16 years old but the young people who are committed are aged six to 14 years old. The group is made up of children who have experienced early trauma, attachment difficulties and some who have additional needs.

Jo does fantastic work with her
drama group for fostered children

Due to the young people's age and experience a lot of focus has been on group and social skills, voice projection, confidence raising, calming techniques and understanding how emotions affect physicality. The children have also picked up a range of drama skills, such as script writing, storyboards, costume design, developing characters and learning skills. This has been achieved through icebreakers, team building activities, drama games, singing, tongue twisters, dressing up, using musical instruments and learning meaningful poems.

The young people chose to perform their poems at our celebration event in November 2014 in front of 120 people. They said that they felt they had achieved something they were not sure they could have done before!

The young people wanted to continue developing their drama and speech and language skills on a regular basis and undertake new projects. The group provides peer support and a safe place for young people to be themselves and share their experiences of being looked after. We're also developing social interaction skills and helping young people to develop an understanding of participation and having a voice about the services they receive.

The group focuses on a particular area of our group agreement each session, such as showing respect and taking part and have a discussion about this. They can also share issues that they are worried, happy, angry about or proud of. Each session is evaluated by the group using scales and visual tools. Young people are always encouraged to share positive feedback about their peers.

Future plans are to prepare, practice and perform a young people's play chosen by the group to an audience in October 2015. They're also preparing poems to interpret and perform at our next Celebration of Achievement event in November 2015.