Encouraging Potential and Inspiring Change - supporting young people
Our EPIC (Encouraging Potential and Inspiring Change) team delivers a range of programmes for young people.
EPIC Learning
EPIC Learning aims to provide a crime and consequence programme for students aged 11 to 16 years. It supports young people who find mainstream schooling difficult to engage with and who are at risk of exclusion or have been excluded due to anti-social behaviour.
Our educational model is founded on experiential learning. Students receive an intensive programme including the core national curriculum (Maths, English, Science, Humanities, PSHE) supported by carrying our real-world learning by connecting with local businesses.
Our curriculum is broad, balanced and designed to support young people's strengths and develop key skills and knowledge. Along with enhancing their understanding to progress onto positive pathways.
We also support our learning offer by introducing the concept of social enterprise.
Team Around the Street
EPIC ‘Team around the Street’ our Youth Support Workers who work in the community with young people through a range of positive activities.
EPIC will spend time with young people and support them to engage in activities that interest them. Whether that is exploring education options, looking for work opportunities or fun community projects to help keep young people active and engaged.
Where can you find us?
We will be working in areas that have been identified by our partners as needing some additional support to engage with young people. If you have an accessible space that you can offer for us to support our work with young people on their patch, then please get in touch using the contact details at the bottom of this page.
EPIC Hub
Our pop-up youth zone is located in the Frenchgate Shopping Centre. EPIC youth workers are there to offer support and signpost young people to a range of positive activities.
Supporting our schools
The team offers a range of intervention and prevention packages for schools and colleges. For more information about the programmes get in touch with the team by calling 01302 736152 or email epic.doncaster@doncaster.gov.uk
Team Around the School
EPIC is able to provide trained professional practitioners to work on a one-to-one basis with children and young people identified partners including schools, Community Safety Team, and South Yorkshire Police.
EPIC will carry out a contextual safeguarding assessment to identify the reasons for their involvement and/or identified vulnerability/risk.
EPIC will provide a tailored and bespoke series of support and direct interventions. As identified by the agreed support plan.
The intervention and support will aim to build strategies with the young person that create a better understanding of behaviour and consequence, resilience and mental toughness.
Our package may include:
- Personal, Social, Health Education (PSHE) - Think Forward including Think Parents
- Citizenship - Youth Voice Lunch Time
- Social Action Based Learning and After School Positive Activities
- Pastoral Youth Work Support - Trusted Mentor
CCE Awareness Workshops
Child sexual, criminal and economic exploitation is rarely a solitary issue. Concerns are often multi-faceted and interrelated.
These types of abuse are extremely complex and often hidden. They occur when children and young people misplace their trust in peers and/or adults who exercise coercion over them through grooming, intimidation, debt bondage and violence for their own gains. The indicators for exploitation can sometimes be mistaken for ‘normal adolescent behaviours’.
It requires professionals and the community to gain awareness, and knowledge and exercise ‘curiosity’ to identify the abuse. Children and young people may not recognise the harm they are experiencing and may be reluctant to talk. All agencies, professionals and the wider community need to be alert to the signs of exploitation and be able to effectively respond.
Our training programme, launched in September 2021, is delivered on a monthly cycle. The workshops are delivered in slots - morning and afternoon - and we have capacity for up to 25 participants. You can book a place via Buy Doncaster website
Change Your Game
Change Your Game is a gritty virtual-reality learning experience that immerses young people into the hard-hitting realities of organised crime. Set in the world of ‘County Lines’, where organised crime groups recruit young people to traffic drugs and expand their distribution networks, this ground breaking film casts you, the viewer, as the main character.
The VR package delivers:
- An immersive and interactive 3D experience
- Highly engaging learning using gaming technology
- Early Intervention Tool to support positive decision-making
- Branching narrative depending on the choices you make
- Shows the hard-hitting consequences of your decisions
The primary objective is to enable young people to recognise the signs of exploitation and develop the resilience and mental toughness to seek support from trusted adults.
Get in touch with the team to find out more about the course.
Want to know more?
Call: 01302 736152
Email: epic.doncaster@doncaster.gov.uk
Downloads & Resources
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