Project Return celebrated its 6 month birthday this Tuesday by holding a virtual house party!

On the 24^th of September last year, the project held its first steering group meeting and had an evening filled with new friendships, laughter and real thoughts on how we can better support the care system in its understanding and provision for trauma. My initial blog reflecting on that evening can be found here. 

Since then the project has gone from strength to strength and some of last year’s highlights can be seen here. We have set our aim: to create a resource that will help someone through the transition out of care by providing additional trauma and relational supports.

And since January we have actively been creating a pathway to achieving this by designing creative workshops. These will enable people with care experience and the workforce to come together to build this resource. Ensuring these voices are heard and acted upon is something the group feels strongly about with “seldomly heard” written in bold during our meetings. Additionally, so far this year we’ve met the First Minister, celebrated at the launch of the Care Review and tried a whole host of holistic activities ourselves.

This month the project saw the first rehearsal of 'Our Choir', a choir for those 16 years and above who have experience of the care and/or justice system, and their workers. Our goal is to bring together everyone to connect through music. The rehearsal was a success, with the group sharing their favourite music (featuring the blasting of heavy metal), building new connections and we ended by learning and singing ‘It's such a perfect day’… which it really was.

Throughout the last 6 months, the core strength of this project has been the individuals who make up the steering group; they have truly come together to be the catalyst for the change they would like to see in how we understand and support trauma. This group has formed real friendships and throughout the changes, we have recently all rallied together and kept our spirits high. The pictures from our house party showcase this!

Going forward we will continue to meet virtually and use this time as a way of building new pathways of support and connection. As always the group is full of ideas so as the saying goes watch this space! 

And whilst the choir is on hold for physical meetings we have created a collaborative playlist: 

Which we encourage you to add a song that has helped you through the day or has resonated with how you feel. More info can be found on my twitter: 

Music for me has always been a form of self care-🎼💜 its helped me identify how I am feeling and allowed me to see I'm not the only one to feel that way... cause hey if someone's wrote a song about it then other people must have felt this way too.

— Jenny Returns (@jenny_returns) March 24, 2020

Project Return is a Staf project, led by members of its steering group, focused on changing how the care system understand and supports trauma. The care and/or justice experienced steering group members, alongside members of the workforce, have been meeting bi-weekly since September 2019.