Northumbria Community Rehabilitation Company Team Manager, Ken Harrison, recently offered his thoughts on how Media Savvy (MS) has helped many of their (offender) service users to turn their lives around:
”Media Savvy allows to the most vulnerable or resistant, to engage at a level where they are not facing challenge about their behaviours but are respected as people. This mirrors positive behaviours with staff modelling, good communication skills and how to behave responsibly.
The opportunity to ‘report’ to MS has helped attendance patterns for those reluctant to engage with traditional probation work and stopped a need in some specific instances to return people to court for breach of orders.
There is something in this about the value people gain from participation that their behaviours begin to change, their responsiveness to probation interventions improves and ultimately their lifestyles change for the better.
Ultimately, the ability to work with others and develop and share skills is a means towards helping people feel accepted, giving them the means to gain confidence is a particularly valuable outcome which MS achieves.
At an organisational level it is clear in the exhibitions [SHINE! / 2SHINE!’] and in the displaying of the ‘posters’, that success is seen in the art work. This has generated interest in the office from service users and staff who stop to look, ask questions and enquire about gaining a place on the course.
This is an excellent result for us and a credit to MS in the nature of your business model. Where else can you go (in such a short time) you see significant individual growth, commitment and change occur. Such change impact on workers, partnership agencies and visitors who as ‘voyeurs’ looking in on the work completed gain from the efforts that each ‘student’, has made and helped to promote and celebrate its success!”
