Stepping Out Blog

When it comes to caring for young adults, the phrase “Social Care” is usually associated with gloomy service backed up with mundane activities. That is, if there are any activities in the first place.

For young people in care, the prospect of being under supervision whilst inside their public living space can be daunting – unless the service is of a standard equal to what Stepping Out is offering.

We believe that making life easy for our service users is in everybody’s best interest. A happy service user will treat staff appropriately, local authority workers respectfully, and will also be less likely to offend the community at large.

More importantly, healthy activities will begin to aid the service user when it comes to addressing their personal issues. This of course naturally helps them gain eventual independence.

What do Stepping Out Offer in Terms of “Fun”?

Here at Stepping Out, we’re always opening up opportunities for our service users to attend free local events, visit tourist hot spots, and so forth. We even provide our young people with tickets to events such as Football matches, where we allocate staff members to attend with them to enjoy the match.

On top of these outings, our semi-independent living projects are filled with board games, chess sets, books, DVDs and more. In-door activities can help build bonds and relationships between them and the staff, leading to amicable outcomes of improvement.

Whats more is, we organise annual in-house BBQs for each of our semi-independent houses, along with celebrations throughout the year for whichever event the service user wishes, with cakes, cards and so forth.

To find out more about our semi-independent living projects, or to ask us how else we engage our service users from across the UK, contact us.

What ideas do you have for making social care more fun? Let us know in the comments below!

Getting young people to read more of anything is hard work. Whether it be books, magazines, or indeed any type of reading material, many young people seem to show almost no interest.

So, how do we at Stepping Out aim to get our young people – who reside in our semi independent living projects, to read more often?

Here are our top five tips.

1. Keep Books Lying Around

The best way to introduce young people to reading material, especially books, is to simply give them easy access.

For example, setting up a book shelf or book-case in a living room or communal area is a great way to encourage young people to browse through books and other reading materials at their own leisure.

This works well because, instead of having to instruct the young person to read something, you give them the opportunity to make the decision for themselves, whilst also making that decision easier in the process.

2. Buy Local & National Newspapers

Books may not appeal to every young person, especially if reading hasn’t been a hobby of theirs in the past.

A great way to introduce reading into the life of a young person, is to habitually purchase the local or national newspaper.

A natural inclination to find out about current news and events will often lead the young person to read such material on a regular basis. Make this process easy by constantly having the latest newspapers available.

3. Encourage Magazine & Blog Subscriptions

On top of traditional books and newspapers, there are other ways in which young people can be introduced to the world of reading.

Subscribing to magazines and online blogs for example, can become a brilliant way in which the young person can access new reading materials on a regular basis.

Blogs in particular are useful, as there are a wide range of blogs across the internet covering almost every topic known to mankind – so the young person is bound to find something of interest.

4. Go Digital With Ebooks

To make reading even easier, encourage the young person to download ebooks, many of which are free.

Teenagers – and people in general nowadays, love technology. So, by having reading material on their smart phones and tablets, they can instantly begin reading things without having to leave the comfort of their digital world.

Ebooks can be read absolutely anywhere with complete ease, including at home, on the train, or even in coffee shops.

5. Keep it Relevant

Above all, no matter which method of reading you wish to help introduce your young person to, ensure that it’s all relevant to them.

If for example, the young person shows an interest in animals, try to suggest animal related magazines and blogs to visit and subscribe to.

Trying to force young people to read about topics of no interest to them will only push them further away from reading as a hobby.

So there you have it, five our best tips to get young people reading.

What do you think of our five tips to get young people reading more? Let us know if you have any tricks of your own below!