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Today we're hearing from Lea Denley, our Participation & Engagement Lead for the YouCan/Unity team here at The Matthew Project. We'll see what it's like to spend a day in her shoes.
Over to you, Lea...
"A day in my life! Ready to be bored? Just joking - I genuinely think I have the best job in the world. I work as the Participation and Engagement Lead in the YouCan/Unity Team.
YouCan supports children and young people affected by a family member’s substance use, while Unity supports young people whose own substance use is having an impact on their lives and those around them.
My role is a split 50/50 between digital engagement and participation. For the digital engagement side of my role, I look after our young people’s website, social media, and the design of leaflets, posters and banners. Anything the team needs to help promote the services or make the experience better for young people who are part of our service.
For Participation, my role is to make sure young people’s voices shape our services. I also support my lovely colleague Josie, who leads on planning activities for YouCan. My favourite activity so far has been pony trekking. Some young people had never been in the woods before, let alone near ponies. It was magical (and no one fell off, which was a relief!).
During school holidays, I’m out and about speaking with young people and supporting activities. During term time, I’m doing the digital side of my role and making sure young people’s suggestions turn into real change. Our service is always evolving, and I LOVE THAT!
So, here’s what a recent Friday looked like…
8:45: First stop: tea and a good natter with whoever is around. Luckily some available participants were found. Phew!
9:00 – 10:00: Turning young people’s ideas into action. We recently did a snapshot survey with young people about how to make our services more accessible and how to reduce worries about stigma. I finished a document with two columns: “You Said (Young People)” and “This What We’re Doing". We are then going to share this with young people, so that they know their voices lead to real change.
10:00 – 11:30: Our brilliant work placement student (with us every Friday since September) arrived! He’s been shaping our service in so many ways, including helping us understand how we can reach more young people. It’s been wonderful to have a young person in the office. We had a supervision session (he’s doing great, obviously), then we had bacon butties, because all great ideas require proper fuel.
11:30– 12:30: I started to analyse survey results from the ‘substance misuse in the family’ training delivered by our service manager and safeguarding manager. The feedback was wonderful, and it was great to read that people felt more comfortable chatting about substances with young people as a result of the training.
12:30 – 13:00: Lunch, yay. An important time. No further details needed.
13:00 – 15:00: Still working through the survey data, but then Josie called! We discussed what to include in the befrienders volunteer booklet. It’s a guide with information on the befrienders role, key contacts and other useful for details to support volunteers.
15:00: Said bye to work placement student and had a highly important office discussion about the latest McDonald’s menu updates.
15:15 – 16:30: Scheduled some social media posts featuring photos from the team’s recent outings. I love showing that we’re not scary. We‘re just people… some of us with a questionable amount of sugar in our coffee, but otherwise totally fine!
16:30 – 17:00: Quickly threw together this very exciting blog about my day! If you have made it this far, well done.
Thanks, Léa."
