ASDAN learners celebrate Short Course achievements at awards evening

Wolverhampton Youth Offending Team (YOT) is a multi-agency team who work alongside young people to reduce the risk of entering the criminal justice system or the likelihood of re-offending. Although there is no single path to youth offending, certain vulnerabilities can increase the possibility of being involved in offending behavior, including poor attainment due to non-attendance and exclusions in the learning environment.

With this knowledge, Wolverhampton YOT strives to support young people into education, training or employment. We spoke to their Education, Employment and Training Adviser, Ian Cooper, about how ASDAN Short Courses have helped their young people to thrive.

“We deliver ASDAN’s Short Courses as they have a proven track record in developing character traits in our young people such as resilience, self-regulation, and emotional and social skills that play an important role in enabling young people to achieve positive health, education, employment, and other outcomes."

"Each Short Course offers young people the chance to develop their learning, teamwork, IT, English and maths skills, and an understanding of how these skills are an everyday part of adult and working life”.

Ian told us how his team recently celebrated their learner’s achievements.

“We have been delivering ASDAN for some time, but the last 18 months have seen more of our young people achieving the full six credits (60 hours) to complete a Short Course. This was something we wanted to celebrate. So, in recognition of this achievement, we hosted our first ASDAN Awards evening."

"Eleven young people from our service were commended for undertaking the voluntary courses designed to develop their employment skills and boost their aspirations for the future. They each successfully completed an ASDAN Short Course while completing intervention plans as part of their involvement with the Youth Offending Team”.

ASDAN’s Short Courses suite comprises of 33 programmes that cover a huge spectrum of engaging topics. Demonstrating this diversity in the offering, certificates were presented for a number of different Short Courses, including Adventure and Residential, Careers and Experiencing Work, Expressive Arts, and Football.

The local Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Education presented the awards and commented on the success.

“Each of the young people have taken part in a personal learning journey through the ASDAN Short Courses, which are completely voluntary. They have developed their skills, qualities and abilities which will help them to explore career and education, employment and training opportunities in the future. The certificates they have achieved help to demonstrate and evidence their vocational skills and positive attitude to work. They have also helped to raise the importance of education and attaining qualifications among their peers and, as a result, they have helped to inspire other young people currently working with Youth Offending Team who are now taking ASDAN Short Courses of their own”.

Read about ASDAN Short Courses and get in touch with an ASDAN advisor to find out more.