Meet the Team - George Arksey
George Arksey joined The Island team in 2021. His background working in the youth sector and passion for sport makes him an ideal person to support the children and young people that we work with. Read on to find out more about George and his work here at The Island.
Describe what you do within your role?
I am one of The Island’s Group Leads alongside Lucy, meaning that I am responsible for the planning, delivery and overseeing of our group-based mentoring provisions. This includes running several youth clubs on weekday evenings throughout the school term, delivering smaller tailored workshops which focus on certain skills and themes each session, organising holiday activities during the school holidays, and liaising with partnership organisations who can facilitate sessions for the young people working with The Island. I also work closely with our Mentee Liaison Office, Ella to help complete assessments, and I also have one to one sessions with several young people.
I am also the Young Person’s Advocate, which means that I am responsible for ensuring that the voice of the young people remains at the core of all the provisions The Island offers. I am relatively new to this role, but during summer of this year myself and the team will be beginning a new evaluation process, allowing us to get direct feedback, lived experiences and suggestions from young people, their families, and the mentors too. The findings of this evaluation will be vital, as it will ensure that the needs and wishes of the young people The Island work with are intrinsically linked to the provisions we deliver in the future. I will also be establishing an advocacy group made up of young people involved with The Island, which will aim to meet periodically over the course of a year, discuss their experiences of provisions at The Island, and feed back to the staff team.
Why did you want to pursue a career in the charity youth sector?
I have been fortunate enough to work in several roles in the past alongside children and young people, and as anyone who has worked in similar roles will tell you, it is both a lot of fun and incredibly rewarding. It was important to me that I found a career that allowed me to enjoy my day-to-day work so much, yet simultaneously feel like I am helping and giving something back to young people, and the charity youth sector is the perfect environment to find this.
What inspired you to want to work with The Island?
I study part time at university, and first came across The Island as part of a student placement. I loved my time on placement here, and I was delighted to be offered a role initially as a Youth Support Worker once my placement came to an end. The reason I wanted to work with The Island is because of the relationships its team of staff and volunteers build with each young person, the bespoke support packages it provides, and opportunities for islands of ‘time and space’ it provides to young people. These qualities are something that I have found to be quite unique to The Island and are incredibly effective in meeting the needs and wishes of young people.
Can you share with us your proudest achievement at The Island so far?
By far the most rewarding aspect of working for The Island is when the young people are able to identify and appreciate the positive changes that have occurred in their lives, and crucially that they are able to understand that they have brought about this change themselves; while I am always happy to help a young person in any way I can, the support myself and my colleagues offer at groups and on a one to one basis is all about giving young people the confidence and resilience to empower them to make their own positive decisions, have their voice heard, and instigate the changes they would like to see in their lives (and not the changes adults / professionals tell them they ought to make!)
Why are mentoring services important to children and young people?
The time the young person spends with their mentor is entirely theirs; what I mean by this is that we at The Island, the family or anyone else won’t influence how the young person and mentor spends those one to three hours per week, and whatever conversations take place will not be shared beyond the mentoring relationships, except in exceptional circumstances.*
It is so important for the young person to have this autonomy, as it promotes positive participation, facilitates a sense of trust and respect with their mentor, empowers a young person to take ownership of their development, and gives them the freedom to pursue their interests as determined by them. This in turn promotes positive self-esteem, builds confidence and resilience, develops social skills and helps them gain a holistic understanding of any difficulties they may have faced.
*The mentor will only share information with The Island Team if they are worried the young person is at risk of harm.
Finally, can you share with us one technique you have used to help improve a child or young person’s motivational levels?
Sometimes, the young people we work with have had adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), have had difficult relationships with adults in their life (be this within their social circles or with professionals such as teachers, social workers or the police), or have felt let down by youth services in the past.
Having been through experiences such as this, it is understandably difficult for young people to trust adults they do not know, and one can appreciate how it could be similarly difficult for a young person in this position to motivate themselves to engage with an organisation like The Island.
Rather than using a tangible technique or method, the most important approach I have adopted to motivate a young person would be getting to know them personally, building a relationship and re-establishing that sense of trust. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to doing this and every young person is unique, and it will take everyone different amounts of time to feel ready to trust adults and services again. Instead of utilising certain techniques, The Island is all about giving young people a safe space to forge these relationships, whether this be with staff or volunteer mentors, and in my experience, this is by far the best approach to motivating a young person to engage and empowering them to make positive decisions and choices for themselves.
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