The Rapport programme was designed for Looked after Children and vulnerable young people. It addresses different backgrounds, different problems and issues, different abilities, mastery, and widely different levels of literacy. Because each course participant works at their own pace, there is no feeling of not being able to keep up with the others, or with expectations.
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
Margaret Mead
Our Rapport programme was first delivered to looked-after children under the care of Slough Borough Council in 2011. Like all our projects, Rapport has monitoring outcomes built into its structure. We use specially designed tools to help participants better express their thoughts and feelings. This also helps us to assess and address their self esteem and self image
She is enjoying what she is doing. She wants to write a lot and we encourage her to use the on-computer dictionary. Now she checks every single word in the dictionary, even the name of her teacher. She said, “These computers are great. They are really cool. I wish I could come to this school every day.”
These may be the words of a song; at least one line is a quote, but the choice of colour, font and angle of type indicates an agile and creative mind. Her social worker was amazed by her work, and also by the fact that she wanted to come back week after week.
Same young person as 1+2:The balloon picture came from our photo library, the butterflies from another photo of a café with butterflies on the wall. She spent a good deal of time cutting and pasting to create an image that symbolises all the things she felt were missing from her life – freedom, grace, & beauty.
Uncommunicative? Words from a rap song, but changed, reordered and made her own, as is the message
One of the older teenagers had a degree of learning difficulty. As well as taking part in small group discussions, she was fascinated by our graffiti library, and by the opportunities to experiment with abstract art.
The original image has much less colour
It’s important for us that communication takes place. This course was a journey of discovery; in looking at unexpected images and reacting to them we discovered much more about the young people.
Christmas is a time for sharing. Every bollard should have its’ own star…
Again, the addition of colour brings another dimension to these gothic images
