An innovative conference, entitled Girfec: A creative approach, was recently held in South Lanarkshire as part of the Creative Learning Networks scheme.
South Lanarkshire’s Cultural Co-ordinator team organised the half day conference which was aimed at colleagues from across agencies and aimed to explore creative approaches to achieving positive outcomes for children, young people and their families linking to the wellbeing indicators.
The Cultural Co-ordinators are part of Integrating Children’s Services with a key remit for vulnerable families so undertake a lot of targeted working with schools and also with children and families. The conference gave an opportunity to bring together a wide range of colleagues to highlight the value of creative approaches when looking at girfec.
The conference offered colleagues the opportunity to hear from keynote speaker David Cameron, hear about practical examples and to network and discover the range of services already available within South Lanarkshire.
The objectives of the conference were to encourage staff to:
▫ Identify areas of their work where arts, culture and creativity could be used to address the wellbeing indicators.
▫ Gain a stronger awareness of national policy in relation to arts, culture and creativity in education.
▫ Take forward innovative approaches within own practice.
▫ Adopt collaborative approaches across resources.
The event was targeted at a wide range of agencies including social work, NHS and the voluntary sector. The following chart shows the breakdown of who attended.
The response from delegates overall was positive with people citing the importance to gather information as being an important part of the event, as well as the chance to hear an inspirational and motivational speaker. One delegate noted “Enthusiastic presenters who made me think about new ways to approach my work with children & families” and another “Really put GIRFEC into a context which will enthuse practitioners.”
A short film feature was made by South Lanarkshire TV about the event – it can be found at the following link http://youtu.be/Tw_t2V-6QLg
