A FABI Christmas Update

Meet the Newest Members of the FABI Team

Let us introduce you to our fabulous FABI worry monsters. These very important members of our team, along with our Family Outreach Workers our supporting our children and young people to acknowledge, express and let go of their worries and anxieties, who will gobble them all up and hug away worries.

Our Shanarri Octopus is supporting our continued ‘SHANARRI Safari’ work giving opportunities for children we support to share their perspectives on the wellbeing indicators. One of the children we support was able to understand that that he needed people to keep him safe and that he shouldn’t have to do this himself. Another child used the octopus to explore the emotions they felt on having contact with a parent and how they wanted this to be.

Resilience Self-Soothing and Calming Kits

Funding from North Lanarkshire’s Community Matters Flexible CVS Fund has enabled us to purchase items to make ‘self-soothing and calming kits.’ Over these last few months children and young people of different ages supported by their Family Outreach Workers have been using the activities/crafts within the kits to support them at times when they are feeling anxious and stressed.

The funding allowed us to purchase ‘Big Life Journals Resilience Kit’ professional licence, promoting activities with children and parents in strengthening the resilience of the families we support.

FABI Team Development Day

Resilience was the theme of our most recent FABI team development day. It was wonderful for the team to come together and share their knowledge, skills and experience.

This was led by one of our FABI team, Elaine, who facilitated a session on ‘Introduction to Resilience Practitioners’ Tools’. This provided space to explore our understanding of resilience, abilities in mapping resilience, storyboarding for resilience and building and maintaining resilience.

One of the quotes highlighted on the day ‘Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow,’ linked to our last session of the day. Which was to watch the movie ‘The Lion King’ where even Mufasa, as King, gets scared sometimes, but with resilience you can be brave when you need to be.

Women’s Outreach Team

An important element of the Women’s Outreach Team, funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, was to establish a parents’ forum so women could be involved in sharing with us their thoughts/views on service and supports and how this group could influence, shape and design our services. In recent weeks we held our first meeting, and it was great to have some of the women we support come along.

We spent some time exploring Circle support with one woman commenting, “You make me feel like a better person” and you “You gave me the strength to leave my relationship”. Additional views shared were the importance of supporting at times of crisis, and the continuity of support, “same face, not having to re-tell life experiences”.

As part of our SHANARRI Safari work we began to explore what it was to be ‘Safe.’ A view shared was that safe meant…

“Not only about physical safety but Circle help keep people ‘mentally safe.”

There were lots of ideas shared on what Circle could do better and these included offering more peer support/group work and linking in with services to help support children and the parents of children with additional support needs (autism, ADHD, etc.)

We look forward to the development of this parents’ forum in the coming months that will support Circle in shaping, developing, and designing our services. Watch this space for more news on this exciting development.

Changes to the Senior FOW in the FABI Team

After more than eight years of working in the FABI team, the last three-and-a-half as the senior, Hazel is leaving the FABIs! Though she’s not going far, as she has been promoted and is moving post to be Circle’s West Lothian Project Manager. Whilst we will miss her in the FABI team we are excited for her as she takes on this new role. The West Lothian team are one lucky squad! Good luck Hazel.

With Hazel moving on this created an opportunity within the team. We are delighted to share with everyone that Aileen will be taking on the role of the FABI senior. This is fantastic news and we wish her all the best in her new role.

FABIs are getting set for Christmas

Christmas is here again and the FABI team are as busy as ever. We wouldn’t be able to support families at Christmas without the amazing support of wonderful individuals, groups and organisations. We want to say a special thanks to Claire who has generously donated Christmas gifts this year, Glasgow Spirit of Christmas who we are truly appreciative of the support of their ‘pledgers’, St Mary’s Episcopal Church for their annual support of gifts and Morrison’s (Hamilton) Community Champion for Food Hampers.

We also want to say a massive thanks to Family Holiday Association who have provided us with funds for families to attend Christmas activities over the month of December. We are looking forward to our movie evening with young people and their families, attending M&D’s Santa’s Magical Circus, and visiting Santa’s Grotto. We are sure these Christmas trips will bring that little bit of extra Christmas magic to the children and families (and the FABI team) this year!

Support our Families Affected by Imprisonment (FABI) team

If you would like to support one of the families our FABI team is supporting this Christmas then please make a donation to our Virtual Christmas tree. Every light, bauble, present and star you buy will mean a donation to a vulnerable family in North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire. Help us light up our tree and give children and families a Christmas to remember for all the right reasons this year.