Pro-Action Hertfordshire

Who we are

PRO-ACTION HERTFORDSHIRE supports, represents and champions the many organisations and individuals across Hertfordshire who work with children and young people.

OUR VISION is for “Every child and young person in Hertfordshire to access high quality opportunities and provision to enhance their growth and development.”

We do this by focusing on 5 key strands of work:

• Quality
• Safeguarding
• Training
• Wellbeing & Resilience
• Opportunities for Children & Young People

QUALITY

Our aim is to raise the quality of provision for children & young people across the county so that young people know they will receive the best possible support from whichever organisation or group that they engage with.

We achieve this by offering a national recognized Quality Assurance Scheme, Ambition Quality which will continue be offered at up to 4 levels, initially concentrating on the first two levels, reviewing annually.  Ambition Quality has specific targeted Quality Assurance programmes to meet the needs of different groups eg Children, Young People and Play Work we therefore offer the programme most appropriate to each group.

SAFEGUARDING

We aim to ensure that all youth and children providers in the county are meeting the Hertfordshire Safeguarding Children’s Board (HSCB) requirements.

We will encourage and assist every any organisation we engage with that is working with children and young people to ensure:

• That each setting has at least 2 members of the team trained to Level 2 Safeguarding, enabling them to operate as a safeguarding lead.
• That all their staff and volunteers:

• Achieve level 1 safeguarding as a minimum standard, by providing courses in various locations around the county.
• Are all checked with an enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service  (DBS)
• Have a place to go to for any issues and questions around safeguarding and their work with children and young people.

TRAINING

We aim to concentrate on key training courses, the majority of which are required for those working with children and young people in a variety of contexts.

These key areas are:

• Safeguarding, Level 1 & Level 2 courses
• First Aid – Emergency and Paediatric First Aid courses
• Health & Safety
• Food safety

WELLBEING & RESILIENCE

As an organisation we responded to the growing requests to provide support in understanding how youth and children’s workers could best assist young people facing challenges around mental health. As a result two of the team were trained to deliver the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) Youth 2 day course, and subsequently can now also offer a one day MHFA Schools and Colleges course.

Currently the demand for the MHFA Youth Course is high and we have received some funding to pilot a programme with partners in schools.

For the future we will:

• Continue to provide training for those working with children and young people in various settings.
• Pilot and develop, as appropriate work with partners into schools, which enables local partners to continue support once we have delivered training.
• Develop, as part of direct work with young people appropriate sessions and responses to equip young people to support themselves more effectively, but also be able to support their friends.

Opportunities for Children & Young People

As an organisation that supports children and young people in Hertfordshire we will work to encourage our member organisations and partners to provide high quality activities. We will also seek to provide various opportunities to meet identified needs of our different age groups.

We will do this by providing:

• Larger activities and events under the YAMA (Youth Activity, Music & Arts) branding.
• Smaller, group focused activity under the YLife (working title) brand.

Membership & Feedback

Membership continues to be an important part of our overall offer, though our emphasis is upon the services and opportunities we offer to create a great membership package that benefits our wide range of groups.

We will continue to gather data and feedback from all activities to provide clear evidence of the value and impact of the services provided by Pro-Action.

Pro-Action is the operating name of Pro-Action Hertfordshire a company limited by Guarantee.

Registered in England & Wales. No. 6653688  Charity Commission No: 1127528 

Registered address: Sylvia Adams House, 24 The Common, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL10 0NB