Young Residents Embrace Life Skills and Positive Mental Health

In Flintshire, a four-day workshop at a supported living scheme for young people experiencing homelessness has equipped five young residents with enhanced life skills and a better understanding of how to maintain positive mental health.

Staff at Llys Emlyn Williams supported living scheme in Holywell partnered with Action for Children’s ‘Skills Plus North Wales’ service to deliver a transformative course, centred around building effective life skills.

The Skills Plus North Wales service is open to care-experienced 14-24 year olds. And, The Decider Skills course focuses on a set of 32 skills to support positive life experiences and mental health; 16 are centred on acceptance and 16 on change.

The course looks at key areas of development including distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotional regulation and effective interpersonal skills.

Underpinned by a concept called The Fizz (recognising the physical signs of emotional distress in the body), and understanding how ‘Feeling the Fizz’ relates to instinctual fight/flight/freeze/flop response; the course enables participants to change from impulsive behaviour towards a new, and less impulsive approach to situations or event. The aim is to help the participants to experience more positive consequences to their actions.

“This extended skills workshop hinged on recognising and understanding emotions and learning how to keep calm in difficult situations. I was incredibly proud of our young people who engaged with the sessions, and grateful to course leader Lisa, who shared some powerful messages.”

Sean McManus

Manager at Llys Emlyn Williams, who arranged the course

Resident Pam said they enjoyed learning about the ‘Anger Iceberg’. “It was a powerful visual representation and helped me to understand how frustrations, pressures, jealousy and disrespect can build up.”
Resident Shaun said: “The Stress Tolerance part of the workshop was really valuable: STOPP – Stop, take a breath, observe, perspective, practice.”
Resident Alex found the ‘is it opinion or is it a fact’ tool useful and has been putting their new skills to use as part of everyday life when talking to staff members and other residents.

All the residents involved in the course had chosen to take part, and there were five residents who completed the four-day course. Consensus from the participants was that the workshops were engaging, fun and educational.

“The Decider skills are taught using a range of props to make their teaching more memorable and fun. Real-world or lived-experience is included if relevant and at least one member of staff participated in each workshop, so a shared language and knowledge base could develop.
“The feedback from the course was very positive, with the young people reporting feeling more confident and less anxious after the sessions. Techniques like anger management, communication skills and managing emotions have proved incredibly valuable and we hope that these skills will continue to help the young people as they focus on their futures.”

Lisa Reakes

Course Leader, Action for Children

Llys Emlyn Williams is a 12-bedroom supported living scheme for homeless young people aged 16-24. The scheme provides a range of activities to promote life skills for the young residents. Places at Llys Emlyn Williams are allocated through Flintshire County Council.

The Decider Skills course is delivered by Action for Children’s ‘Skills Plus North Wales’ service and further information can be found: Skills Plus + | North and Mid Wales | Action For Children