January 2012
Maureen McGinn from the Big Lottery has agreed to participate in our seminar on May 29th.
October 2011
Data has now been gathered from 26 children, aged 6-15 years attending 9 different befriending projects in Scotland and England.
Interview were conducted with 17 children (9 boys and 8 girls aged 6-13 years) prior to them knowing who their befriender might be. The interviews included the use of two sets of photographic cards; Activity Cards and Face cards. Nineteen children (13 boys and 6 girls aged 7-15 years) were interviewed after they had spent time with their befriender. Ten of the children (4 boys and 6 girls)
were interviewed both before and after meeting their befriender. A relationship mapping exercise
using concentric circles and coloured stickers was used with all 26 children.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 lone mothers/female carers and 3 lone fathers, documents collected from 9 projects and a key informant interviewed in each.
The project advisory group are planning to invite practitioners from befriending, children’s and volunteer projects and policy makers to an event in December 2010.
This will provide an opportunity for specific policy and practice implications to be identified and prioritised. This will be listed on the events page.
July 2011
Thanks to the hard work of 10 Befriending Projects across Scotland and England we have now undertaken interviews with 26 children and young people aged 6-15 years.
Due to recruitment difficulties we have not been able to conduct or plan two interviews with each child. For 12 children only one interview has been undertaken. For the other 14 children, second interviews have taken place with 5 and another 9 are planned for September.
Analysis of the interviews is underway and the Project Advisory Group will be meeting in October to discuss the most appropriate ways of sharing the findings with practitioners and policy makers. If
you have any ideas please contact Sue Milne (s.e.milne@ed.ac.uk).
May 2011
First interviews have now taken place with 17 children, aged 7-14 years, and the parents (including 3 lone fathers). The children are hoping to work with an adult befriender from one of the 5 projects currently involved in the research. Second interviews will be starting in a couple of week's time.
A recent change to the system of making police and disclosure checks has hampered the volunteer recruitment processes and the recruitment of research participants. We are therefore still looking to work with other projects and to recruit 7 more children/youngpeople to interview. However, as time is short we will only be doing one interview withchildren who already have a befriender.
March 2011
Interviews have now taken place with 9 children and their parents from 3 projects in different parts of the UK. We are still needing more so please get in touch with me if you think you have a suitable young person 8 - 16 years.
NOTE THE CHANGE OF AGE
January 2011
We are currently working with befriending projects in Scotland and England to recruit children and their mothers. We hope that interviews with them and with project managers will begin very soon.