The stimulus for the establishment of the Bay-tistic – happy meetings was created by a desire and commitment from both bayc (Birmingham Association of Youth Clubs) and B-Autistic – to ensure the young people from B-Autistic were involved in the decision making processes within B-Autistic. The key trigger for the establishment of the Bay-tistic meetings was formed during a meeting at bayc on 16th February 2007 with B-Autistic.
The aim of this meeting was to:
* ‘Unpack’ what needs to happen next to enable young peoples’ involvement in B-Autistic developments.
* To explore the potential for bayc to support B-Autistic by facilitating a limited number of sessions with young people, aiming to ‘create a space’ for young people to express their perspectives on what they want from B-Autistic.
This allowed us to reflect on the progress made in involving young people so far within B-Autistic, and to discuss how to move the involvement on to another level. All agreed that we need to put ‘our cards on the table’ to explore whether we still have shared aims in this respect and to agree how to move forward.
The aim was to help to gather evidence rooted in young peoples’ expression of their interests, aspirations and needs whilst also demonstrating that constructive involvement of young people can be achieved. This would contribute to the development of a strong evidence base.It was recognised during this initial meeting that it may be unrealistic to expect parents and/or volunteers (from B-Autistic) to deliver these types of sessions and be able to make this level of commitment at the time. B-Autistic expressed concerns that the young people connected to B-Autistic would not have the capacity to be involved in this type of session without specific adult support present in the sessions.
There were particular concerns relating to the potential for ‘unexpected’ behavioral difficulties and resulting safety issues. The barriers could be considered as too significant to consider this approach. It was therefore agreed that bayc would facilitate a meeting with the parents first to outline the proposal of establishing a series of meetings with the young people. This meeting would enable the parents to express any concerns
they had.
After meeting with the parents and volunteers from B-autistic the overall feed back (after working through some initially reservations) was very positive and the parents and volunteers were collectively very keen for bayc to support what was later to become commonly known as the Bay-tistic happy meetings.
• First Meetings (April 2007)
The first meeting with the young people went ahead on Tuesday the 17th April, in which six young people attended and at least three other young people expressed an interest in attending, although for various reasons were unable to attend. This high attendance was indicative of a very high response rate from the young people from B-Autistic.
The initial objectives from bayc’s perspective for the first meeting were:
* For the young people to have time and space get to know each other.
* To make the session fun and enjoyable.
* To introduce the concept of decision making.
* To support the young people to decide if they would like to continue to meet as a group.
During this first meeting, there was a clear sense off ownership from the young people right from the start of this meeting. Without any prompting one young man introduced the meeting and facilitated the early interactions. His actions clearly gave a message to all the other young people to affirm to them that this is their group and it is a safe space. It was not long before another participant asked if he could also lead the meeting, whilst also taking a turn to write on the flip chart.
It was established right at the start of this very first meeting that the young people wanted to name their group. The suggestion posed by one young person was ‘Bay-tistic’ meetings (created by the amalgamation of the names bayc and B-Autistic). Another suggestion from the young people was to name them the ‘happy meetings’. It was therefore agreed that from this point on these meetings would be referred to as ‘The Bay-tistic happy meetings’.
As this was a new group, the element of ice breakers / getting to know you games was crucial. Again this process was handed over to the young people and after much discussion regarding what was or was not appropriate, another of the participants, facilitated a game, which clearly was a fantastic achievement in consideration of the fact that prior to this meeting she had never met any of the workers present yet was still extremely confident to create and facilitate this ice breaker activity.
The penultimate question to the group before concluding the first session was would you like to meet again next week – to which the resounding response was: Yes!
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